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PUBLISHED     BY 


The  New-Columbia  Pdbushing  Oa 

FINDLAY,  OfflO,  U.S.A. 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT  OF 

lies,  Ben  ■:.  L'.nclsey 


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THE   NEW  COLUMBIA 
OR  THE  RE-UNITED  STATES 


THE 

NEW  COLUMBIA 


OR  THE 


RE-UNITED  STATES 


BY 

PATRICK  QUINN  TANGENT 


FINDLAY,  OHIO 

NEW  COLUMBIA  PUBLISHING  CO. 

1909 


Copyright 

George  H.  Phelps 

1909 


All  Rights  Reserved. 


ffiijf  fLafergilie  ^rrBB 

R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


EDeDication, 


TO  THE  BLESSED  MEMORY  OF   HIM    WHO  SPAKE  AS  NEVER    MAN    SPOKE, 

YET  HAD  NOT  WHERE  TO   LAY   HIS  HEAD; 

WHO  GAVE  HIS  LIFE  THAT  ALL  MAY  KNOW  THE  TRUTH 

AND  LIVE,  HERE  AND  HEREAFTER; 

TO  THE  MARTYRS  TO  HUMAN  LIBERTY  AND  EQUALlTv  IN   ALL  AGES, 

AND  TO  ALL  FOR  WHOM  THESE  GREAT  SACRIFICES 

WERE  MADE,  THIS  LITTLE  WRITING 

IS  REVERENTLY  AND  LOVINGLY  DEDICATED 

BY  ITS  MOST  UNWORTHY  AUTHOR. 


1106142 


PREFACE 

THE  author  of  this  little  booklet,  if  indeed  it  shall  ever  be 
born  alive  into  this  world  of  many  letters,  has  devoted 
something  over  thirty  years  of  his  life  to  what  is  called  the 
practice  of  law. 

Law,  in  its  just  significance,  should  be  defined  as  the  expression 
of  universal  justice;  and  the  practice  of  law  should  involve  only 
the  details  of  the  process  by  which  that  justice  is  accomplished : 
But,  unfortunately  for  the  profession,  and  still  more  unfortunately 
for  society,  it  has,  full  oftener  than  otherwise,  become  the  science 
by  which  a  client  is  enabled  to  have  his  own  way.  In  this  aspect 
of  the  science  of  legal  practice,  the  practitioner  has  very  little 
opportunity  for  rendering  to  the  society  at  large  any  just  or  fair 
equivalent  for  the  benefits  which  he  derives  from  being  permitted 
to  live  in  the  world  and  mingle  with  his  fellow  mortals. 

It  is  with  a  view  of  trying  to  give  to  this,  and  coming  genera- 
tions, some  measure  of  return  for  social  advantages  which  the 
author  has  enjoyed  that  this  work  is  undertaken. 

If  it  shall,  in  the  just  estimate  of  its  readers,  be  thought  to  even 
this  score,  and  justly  compensate  the  world  for  the  trouble  which 
the  author  has  unwittingly  occasioned,  it  will  have  met  all  of  his 
expectations. 

P.  Q.  T. 


Vll 


CONTENTS 


Lands  and 


I.  The  Pleasure  Excursion 

II.  The  New  Government    . 

III.  The   Standard  of    Value    and    the   Government 

Currency  .... 

IV.  Our  Foreign  Policy 
V.  The  Land 

VI.  Railroads 

VII.  Telegraphs  and  Telephones  . 

VIII.  Highways        ..... 

IX.  Internal  Improvements  of  Government 

Waterways       .... 

X.  Electricity     ..... 

XI.  Charity 

XII.  Fuel  and  Lights      .... 

XIII.  Staple  Agricultural  Products 

XIV.  Education       ..... 
XV.  Criminal  Laws  and  Penal  Institutions 

XVI.  Government    Buildings;     Assumption 

Debts        .... 

XVII.  Townships       .... 

XVIII.  The  County    .... 

XIX.  The  State       .... 

XX.  Government  Offices  Generally 

XXI.  Legal  Conveyancing 

XXII.  The  Practice  of  Law 

XXIII.  Religion 

XXIV.  Insurance        .... 
XXV.  Fire  Protection 

XXVI.  Municipalities 

XXVII.  Hospitals  for  the  Insane 

XXVIII.  Industrial  Schools 

XXIX.  Taxation         .... 

XXX.  The  Public  Health 

XXXI.  The  Peace  of  Society 

XXXII.  Intoxicants  and  Alcoholic  Liquors 


OF    Public 


CONTENTS 


XXXIII.  Legislative  and   Judicial  Fitoctions  of  the   Re 

United  States  . 

XXXIV.  Inventions  and  Copyrights 
XXXV.  The  International  Marriage 

XXXVI.  The  Transition 

XXXVII.  The  Retiirn  of  the  Pilgrims 

XXXVIII.  Double  Entry  Books  of  the  Government 

XXXIX.  The  Financier 

XL.  The  Election  of  Money  and  its  Candidates 

XLI.  The  General  Clearing-House 

XLII.  The    Effect    upon    the    Individual    Energy 

Initiative  .... 

XLIII.  The  Way  It  Came  About  . 

XLIV.  Fault  of  the  System,  not  of  the  People 


48 
50 
51 
S3 

57 
61 
64 
68 


83 
87 
93 


INTRODUCTION 

WHILE  it  may  not  be  verified  by  any  translation  of  the 
Book  of  Genesis,  we  have  reason  to  beheve  that  our 
first  parents  were  shoved  out  of  the  Garden  of  Eden 
backward :  and  that  none  of  their  descendants  have  ever  yet  dis- 
covered the  necessity,  or  propriety,  of  facing  about. 

They  seem  to  have  gone  through  life  with  their  eyes  to  the 
scenes  and  their  ears  to  the  echoes  of  the  past.  Our  literature,  and 
the  curriculum  of  our  educational  institutions  are  made  up  very 
largely  of  the  history  of  persons  and  events  long  agone.  We  send 
our  sons  to  College  at  the  risk  of  their  health,  their  morals,  and  in 
these  days  of  hazing  and  football,  their  lives  and  limbs  —  and 
what  for?  To  learn  dead  languages,  and  the  history  of  dead 
things.  To  learn  how  man  has  undertaken  in  the  past  to  divide 
God's  footstool  and  man's  habitation,  by  some  arbitrary  rule,  and 
without  God's  authority,  into  fragments  and  sections. 

From  which,  and  as  incident  to  these  divisions  of  His  realm, 
they  have  attempted  to  parcel  out  His  Sovereignty  to  rulers,  kings, 
potentates,  and  so-called  governments.  In  short,  the  Alpha  and 
Omega  of  so-called  education  to  day  has  to  do  almost  solely  with 
the  dead,  and  what  might  well  be,  the  forgotten  past. 

With  this  sort  of  mental  training  and  discipline,  it  is  not  at  all 
remarkable  that  we  jump  at  the  conclusion  that  the  older  a  thing 
or  an  institution,  the  better  and  safer  it  is;  whereas,  in  actual 
practice,  we  discover  that  the  universal  trend  of  all  things  is  tow- 
ard improvement,  and  that  essential  perfection  is  the  ultimate  des- 
tiny of  all  things. 

The  history  of  the  past  is  but  an  endless  sequence  and  succes- 
sion of  mistakes  and  injustices,  both  of  men,  and  of  institutions, 
and  the  only  conceivable  use  of  its  study  is  to  avoid  its  errors.      It 

I 


2  INTRODUCTION 

is  high  time  that  all  men  and  all  nations  adopt  the  precept  of 
Paul,  the  great,  if  not  the  greatest,  Apostle,  when  he  said,  "Breth- 
ren, I  count  not  myself  to  have  apprehended :  But  this  one  thing 
I  do,  forgetting  those  things  which  are  behind,  and  reaching  forth 
unto  those  things  which  are  before,  I  press  toward  the  mark  for 
the  prize  of  the  high  calling  of  God  in  Christ  Jesus." 

So  far  as  it  is  given  us  to  know  of  the  economy  of  nature,  or 
the  will  of  nature's  God,  this  orb  was  fashioned  for  man's  habita- 
tion. The  beneficence  of  nature  fully  warrants  the  conclusion 
that  it  was  the  divine  purpose  that  man  should  be  happy,  "  In  the 
land  which  the  Lord,  thy  God,  giveth  thee."  And  it  only  remains 
for  man  to  adjust  and  provide  the  conditions  around  and  about 
him,  and  use  the  means  which  nature  has  provided  in  beneficent 
profusion,  to  accomplish  this  happy  consummation. 

The  author  received  what  little  education  he  has  upon  a  dairy 
farm  in  process  of  improvement  from  primeval  forest,  where 
most  of  the  family  worked  most  of  the  time  in  farm  or  internal 
improvement;  those  who  so  labored  were  appreciated  as  fully 
as  those  who  served  to  produce  the  necessaries  of  the  family  and 
the  marketable  commodities  which  the  farm  produced.  We  all 
ate  at  the  same  board,  traded  at  the  store  upon  the  family  fund, 
no  matter  in  what  department  each  applied  his  service.  The 
elder  sister  taught  the  family  school,  and  the  father  done  the 
family  preaching  and  philosophizing,  and  all  were  regarded  as  of 
equal  value  in  the  social  and  industrial  economy  of  the  family. 

That  is  almost  the  only  experience,  the  only  training  of  which 
the  author  can  conceive  which  will  develop  either  statesmen  or 
social  or  political  economists ;  and  that  school  lays  the  foundations 
for  rugged  physical  constitutions,  and  furnishes  the  essential 
ground  plan  of  pure  democratic,  republican  government. 

We  have  on  this  continent  of  North  America,  and  in  these 
United  States,  a  land  dedicated  by  the  blood  of  patriot  fathers 
and  the  sacrifice  of  sainted  mothers  to  the  shrine  of  social,  political 


INTRODUCTION  3 

and  industrial  liberty.  A  land  wherein  the  voice  of  the  people  is 
the  voice  of  God,  wherein  it  is  both  possible  and  practicable  to 
make  our  government,  and  keep  it,  what  we  desire  that  it  should 
be.  That  voice  and  that  arm  of  this  people  is  circumscribed  by  no 
power.  We  have  no  constitution,  no  law,  and  no  institution  but 
that  we  can  renew  and  reform,  as  often  as  the  majority  voice  of 
this  people  declare  and  demand. 

More  than  a  century  gone,  our  illustrious  forefathers  discov- 
ered and  declared  that  all  men  were  created  equal  and  equally 
endowed  by  their  Creator;  and  it  is  surely  going  to  be  discovered, 
ere  long,  that  our  mothers,  our  wives,  our  sisters,  our  daughters, 
and  our  sweethearts,  were  created  by  the  same  process,  and  about 
the  same  time,  and  that  they  are  joint  beneficiaries  with  men  in  all 
the  bounties  of  creation. 

Therefore,  "forgetting  those  things  which  are  behind,  and 
reaching  forth  unto  those  things  which  are  before,"  let  us  all  face 
about  and  look  forward,  and  not  backward,  for  this  has  been  the 
fundamental  mistake  of  the  great  majority  of  mankind. 

By  way  of  conclusion  to  this  brief  introductory  chapter,  we  may 
say  that  it  is  the  purpose  of  this  work  to  record  our  prophecy  as 
to  what  this  people  of  the  United  States,  and  the  Canadian 
provinces,  are  going  to  do  in  the  near  future,  and  point  out  the 
practical  results  which  are  to  follow  in  the  social,  industrial,  and 
economic  life  of  the  people  who  rule  this  nation. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   PLEASURE   EXCURSION 

THEY  will  assemble  at  the  various  seaports  bordering  the 
United  States  and  Canadian  possessions  in  North  America 
all  of  the  war  vessels  and  all  craft  suitable  for  navigating 
the  high  seas:  And  they  will  mobilize  at  these  various  seaports 
all  persons  who  are  unwilling  to  do,  with  their  hands  or  brain, 
their  fair  share  of  all  the  service,  of  every  sort  and  description, 
necessary  to  produce  and  distribute  the  necessaries  and  comforts 
of  life,  and  beautify,  improve  and  adorn  this  North  American  con- 
tinent to  the  utmost  limit  of  its  capacity  and  fertility;  to  make  it 
in  truth,  as  well  as  in  name,  a  land  of  personal,  rehgious,  and  indus- 
trial liberty,  with  equal  rights  and  opportunities  to  all,  and  with 
special  privileges  to  none. 

Especially  will  they  so  mobilize  all  practical  politicians,  and  all 
men  and  women  who  are  so  constituted,  as  that  they  are  content, 
by  any  process,  to  live  in  idleness  by  the  labor  and  sacrifice  of 
their  fellow  mortals. 

They  will  convey  to  these  ships,  all  the  gold  and  silver,  and  all 
forms  of  money,  and  all  obligations  which  pass  current  as 
money;  and  such  metal  money  as  cannot  be  used  for  ballast 
will  be  loaded  in  transports  and  mudscows  to  insure  its  depor- 
tation, and  attached  in  tow  to  the  various  fleets. 

These  ships  will  be  commissioned  to  land  at  all  the  seaports  of 
all  the  countries  of  the  old  world  with  the  people  thus  mobilized, 
who  will  be  invited  to  embark  and  enjoy  a  pleasure  excursion  to 
such  foreign  lands  as  they  may  desire  to  visit ;  and  the  moneys  so 
deported  will  be  unloaded  at  the  several  ports  by  the  several  fleets, 
in  the  proportion  in  which  the  several  excursionists  desire  to  land, 
for  their  use  during  their  stay  aboard,  where  they  will  be  the  guests 

5 


6  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

of  the  royality  and  aristocracy  of  all  the  foreign  powers  until  they 
shall  desire  to  return  to  the  land  of  Liberty,  and  of  equal  rights, 
responsibilities,  and  opportunities. 

On  the  return  voyage,  these  ships  will  be  ballasted  with  iron, 
coal,  lead,  copper,  and  all  useful  metals  (not  precious),  and  will, 
bring  to  our  shores  the  unemployed  and  oppressed  of  all  foreign 
lands  who  desire  to  come  and  establish  a  home  in  God's  land  of 
freedom,  who  are  willing  to  do  their  fair  share  of  the  work  of  mak- 
ing this  land,  and  keeping  it,  for  all  future  generations  a  fit  habi- 
tation for  husband,  wife  and  children. 

The  men  and  women  who  perform  the  actual  labor  of  navigat- 
ing this  craft  of  pleasure  seekers,  and  of  feeding  them  enroute,  and 
ministering  to  their  wants  and  washing  their  dirty  linen,  will  on 
their  return  to  this  land  of  human  equality  be  rewarded  by  the 
government  which  will  be  established  during  their  stay  abroad  at 
the  uniform  rate  of  five  so-called  dollars  for  each  six  hour  day's 
service,  account  of  which  will  be  kept  and  returned  by  the  chief 
stoker  of  each  vessel  comprising  the  several  fleets,  and  will  be  paid 
in  government  '^  certificates  of  service,"  which  will  be  the  only  cir- 
culating medium  of  the  government. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   NEW    GOVERNMENT 

AS  soon  as  these  ships  shall  have  cleared  the  ports  and  are  out 
of  sight  of  our  shores,  the  people  will  establish  a  new  seat 
of  government  for  the  territory  now  included  within  the 
United  States  and  the  Canadian  Provinces,  which  will  be  located 
on  the  Missouri  River,  not  far  from  Sioux  City,  Iowa,  as  near  as 
possible  to  the  geographical  center  of  the  territory  within  its  juris- 
diction and  domain. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  7 

The  Canadian  Provinces  will  be  divided  by  imaginary  lines 
corresponding  to  the  several  states  of  the  American  Union,  and 
sub-divided  in  like  manner  into  counties  and  townships,  in  square 
form  so  nearly  as  practicable;  and  the  several  states  of  the  old 
union  will  be  readjusted  in  the  same  manner  and  the  name  of 
the  new  nation  will  be  "THE  RE-UNITED  STATES  OF 
AMERICA." 

All  governmental  powers  and  functions,  legislative,  executive 
administrative,  and  judicial,  will  be  vested  in  a  board  or  congress 
of  Governors;  two  of  whom,  one  man,  and  one  woman,  shall  be 
elected  every  year  by  the  electors  of  each  state;  and  all  citizens, 
male  and  female,  above  the  age  of  eighteen  years  who  shall  have 
resided  for  one  year  within  the  state  of  their  residence,  will  be 
electors,  qualified  to  vote  at  all  elections,  and  upon  all  questions  of 
public  interest  which  shall  come  before  the  people. 

The  Governors  shall  be  maintained  at  the  seat  of  government 
at  the  public  expense,  and  shall  be  paid  at  the  rate  of  five  dollars 
for  each  six  hour  day's  service  devoted  to  the  public  business;  and 
shall  be  in  continuous  annual  session,  beginning  on  the  first  Mon- 
day in  January  of  each  year,  but  may  adjourn,  or  recess,  as  often 
as  the  public  business  will,  in  their  judgment,  justly  permit. 

The  proceedings  of  the  governors  shall  be  public;  and  they 
shall  provide,  and  keep,  and  publish,  a  government  record  wherein 
they  shall  record  all  of  their  proceedings,  including  all  debates,  and 
all  votes,  and  all  statutes,  orders  and  decrees,  a  copy  of  which  shall 
be  preserved  in  the  archives  at  the  seat  of  government  and  a 
copy  of  which  shall  be  bound  periodically,  properly  indexed,  and 
filed  in  a  county  library  in  each  county  of  the  Re-United  States, 
and  in  every  educational  institution  established  and  maintained 
by  the  government ;  and  every  citizen  may  receive  the  current 
government  record  by  daily  mail  at  the  subscription  price  of  one 
dollar  a  year. 

The  government,  as  so  embodied,  shall  enact,  promote,  and 


8  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

execute  all  such  laws,  orders,  and  governmental  edicts  as  in  the 
judgment  of  a  majority  of  the  governors  elected  to  said  body  shall 
from  time  to  time  seem  necessary  to  accomplish  the  object  of  popu- 
lar self-government,  as  specified  in  the  declaration  of  American 
Independence  and  the  preamble  of  the  Federal  compact  of  1787, 
and  to  accomplish,  perfect,  operate,  and  maintain  the  political, 
social,  and  industrial  conditions  hereinafter  outlined,  and  such 
others,  as  in  the  evolution  of  society,  and  the  arts  and  sciences, 
shall,  in  the  view  of  these  governmental  agencies,  seem  necessary 
to  secure  the  liberty  and  equal  rights  and  opportunities  of  all  the 
subjects  of  government. 

They  will  adopt  and  promulgate  a  code  of  uniform  general 
laws  which  shall  apply  and  operate  universally  throughout  the 
territorial  domain,  to  be  known  as  the  Revised  Statutes  of  the  Re- 
United  States,  the  first  section  of  the  first  chapter  of  which  shall 
read  as  follows:  "THEREFORE,  ALL  THINGS  WHATSO- 
EVER YE  WOULD  THAT  MEN  SHOULD  DO  TO  YOU, 
DO  YE  EVEN  SO  TO  THEM:  FOR  THIS  IS  THE  LAW 
AND  THE  PROPHETS." 

The  government  shall  never  delegate  to  any  other  man  or  body 
of  men  the  legislative  power;  but  they  may  delegate  all  other 
functions,  except  that  they  shall  be  the  final  ultimate  tribunal  to 
sit  in  judgment  upon  the  natural  rights  of  every  subject  which 
involves  any  element  of  personal  liberty;  and  they  will  provide 
by  law  for  an  appeal  to  them  from  every  inferior  judicial  function, 
or  functionary,  in  all  such  cases. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  STANDARD   OF  VALUE  AND   THE  GOVERN- 
MENT  CURRENCY 

THEY  will  establish  a  legal  standard  of  value  which  shall 
consist  of  a  six  hour  days  service,  upon  which  they  will  fix 
an  arbitrary  exchange  value  of  five  dollars.  They  will 
establish  a  government  bureau  of  engraving  and  printing,  whereat 
they  will  manufacture  government  service  certificates,  in  quanti- 
ties and  denominations  suitable  at  all  times  for  the  convenent  use 
of  the  people  in  the  exchange  of  the  various  products  and  results 
of  individual  effort,  and  the  payment  of  those  who  serve  in  the 
various  departments  of  the  public  service. 

These  certificates  shall  be  engraved  in  the  manner  substan- 
tially in  which  gold  certificates  are  now  constructed,  according  to 
the  various  tastes  of  the  artisans  and  designers  among  the  people ; 
they  shall  portray  the  faces  of  the  statesmen  and  patriots  of  this 
nation  past,  present  and  future,  including  at  all  times,  those  of 
Washington,  Lincoln,  John  Brown,  and  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 

These  certificates  will  be  a  legal  tender  in  discharge  of  all  obli- 
gations, public  and  private,  except  such  as  remain  unliquidated  by 
the  deportation  of  all  the  money,  and  most  of  the  people  who  claim 
to  own  it ;  but,  if  any  creditor  coming  to  our  shores,  wants  gold 
coin  in  payment  of  his  demands,  and  we  cannot  satisfy  him  with 
staple  products,  we  will  dig  in  the  earth,  and  lubricate  the  minting 
machinery,  and  grind  out  for  him  to  his  satisfaction ;  there  will  be 
credit  in  individual  transactions,  and  no  usury,  for  there  will 
always  be  cash. 

All  persons  performing  service,  except  for  themselves,  and 
upon  their  own  domain,  and  in  their  own  devices,  will  be  paid  for 
such  service  in  current  service  certificates,  at  the  established  legal 


lo  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

standard  of  the  value  of  service ;  and  aside  from  their  ornamenta- 
tion, these  certificates  will  simply  recite  that  the  bearer  has  per- 
formed a  service  equal  to  the  denomination,  in  figures,  and  other- 
wise, appearing  upon  the  certificate. 

For  public  convenience,  and  as  a  place  of  safe  deposit,  there 
will  be  established  in  every  county  one  or  more  government  banks 
in  which  will  be  kept  adequate  stores  of  government  currency; 
which  bank  shall  be  conducted  as  an  adjunct  of  the  post  office; 
and  all  persons  performing  service  payable  by  the  government, 
shall  be  paid  through  the  local  bank,  and  the  United  States  banks 
shall  be  permitted  to  loan  currrency  to  the  individual  upon  ap- 
proved security,  without  interest,  for  the  construction  of  his  home 
and  its  adornment,  and  such  individual  enterprises  as  he,  or  she, 
may  desire  to  pursue. 


CHAPTER  IV 

OUR   FOREIGN   POLICY 

THEY  will  maintain  no  embassies  or  foreign  consulates  and 
no  governmental  institutions  or  enterprises  abroad,  except 
upon  the  expressed  invitation  of  the  majority  of  the  citi- 
zens of  such  nations,  and  then  only  for  the  purposes  of  social  and 
commercial  interchange  which  shall  involve  no  element  of  profit. 
They  will  impose  no  impost  duties.  They  will  give  their  sur- 
plus product  to  any  foreign  people  at  the  cost  of  their  production, 
and  transportation,  according  to  our  economic  statistics,  and  if 
they  can  produce  more  than  they  need,  and  furnish  it  to  our  people 
cheaper  than  we  can  produce  it,  we  will  gladly  receive  it.  We  will 
deal  justly  and  liberally  with  all  foreign  nations  and  peoples.  We 
will  give  their  citizens  who  come  among  us  all  the  rights,  protec- 
tion and  privileges  which  we  accord  to  our  own  citizens. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  ii 

We  will  continue  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  to  furnish  an 
asylum  for  the  oppressed  of  all  lands.  We  will  naturalize  all  for- 
eign subjects  who  will  come  among  us,  at  the  expiration  of  one 
year  after  they  shall  have  come,  declaring  their  purpose  to  become 
citizens.  If  anybody  with  an  honest  heart  and  purpose  wishes  to 
come  and  adopt  our  country  as  his  home,  and  assist  to  beautify  our 
land  and  make  it  a  fit  habitation  for  husband,  wife  and  children, 
we  shall  welcome  them  with  kind  hospitality  and  help  them  all  we 
can;  and  if  we  get  crowded  too  much,  we  have  little  doubt  that  we 
may  purchase  waste  land  of  foreign  nations  to  establish  indepen- 
dent colonies. 

Foreign  nations  will  be  welcome  to  maintain  consulates  and 
embassies  in  our  country  for  any  just  purpose,  which  such  gov- 
ernmental agencies  will  ever  serve ;  and  we  will  do  all  in  our  power 
to  establish  and  forever  maintain  an  enduring  peace  with  ail 
nations  and  all  peoples. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   LAND 

WE  will  declare  that  "the  earth  (that  is,  our  part  of  it)  is 
the  Lord's  and  the  kingdoms  thereof,  "  but  that  man 
having  been  commanded  to  subdue,  multiply  and  re- 
plenish it,  has  a  possessory  right  to  the  temporary  exclusive  occu- 
pancy of  such  portion  of  it  as  he  needs  for  his  home,  and  the  just 
pursuit  of  the  business  in  social  economy  which  he  has  a  taste  and 
capacity  to  conduct ;  but  that  all  forms  of  private  monopoly  are 
both  unjust  and  intolerable,  and  will  be  discouraged  and  destroyed 
to  the  full  extent  possible  in  sovereign  popular  government. 

We  shall  provide  for  each  county  in  the  commonwealth  a  gov- 
ernment land  agency,  presided  over  by  an  officer  of  the  Re-United 


12  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

States,  who  shall  have  charge  of  the  land  records  within  that  county 
wherein  shall  be  kept  a  record  of  all  transfers  and  encumbrances 
of  possessory  rights  and  improvements  thereof.  He  shall  be 
officially  known  as  the  Recorder  of  the  Re-United  States  for  that 
County. 

All  persons  shall  record  at  this  agency,  under  the  direction  of 
the  county  surveyor,  a  pertinent  description  of  all  land  by  him  or 
her  personally  occupied  as  a  home,  or  actually  used  in  their  busi- 
ness ;  for  which  land  may  be  actually  used,  which  shall  be  the  limit 
of  his,  or  her,  individual  holdings;  and  this  will  be  subject  to  sale, 
or  encumbrance  by  the  person  registering  the  same,  and  may  be 
transmitted  by  testamentary  instrument,  or  in  its  absence,  will 
descend  to  the  heirs  at  law. 

No  person  will  be  permitted  to  hold  land  for  speculative  pur- 
poses, nor  to  levy  or  collect  rent ;  and  all  unoccupied  land  shall  be 
in  the  control  at  all  times  of  the  county  land  agency  and  may  be 
settled  by  actual  occupation  and  registry  at  any  time.  And  when- 
ever the  occupant  of  any  registered  land  shall  abandon  the  actual 
occupancy,  or  actual  use,  as  above  specified,  for  the  period  of  one 
year,  so  that  it  shall  have  remained  unused  or  unoccupied  for  one 
year,  it  shall  then  be  subject  to  entry  and  record  by  any  person 
who  may  desire  to  enter,  occupy  and  use  it  and  make  lawful  record 
thereof. 

It  will  be  the  duty  of  the  county  surveyor  to  survey  and  record 
the  survey  of  all  locations,  so  as  to  fix  and  determine  the  lines  and 
boundaries  thereof.  The  county  land  recorder,  and  the  county 
surveyor  shall  be  elected  annually  by  the  electors  of  the  county; 
they  will  be  permitted  to  employ  such  assistants  from  time  to  time 
as  they  may  require  in  the  performance  of  their  duties  and  they 
shall  keep  a  strict  account  of  the  service  which  they  render,  meas- 
ured by  six  hour  days,  and  shall  be  paid  like  their  assistants,  by 
the  government  cashier,  upon  the  approval  of  the  local  auditor 
at  the  lawful  uniform  rate  for  which  all  service  is  rewarded. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  13 

CHAPTER  VI 

RAILROADS 

THEY  will  construct,  equip,  operate,  and  maintain  with  the 
greatest  efficiency  and  security  a  system  of  trunk  lines 
traversing  the  entire  domain,  North  and  South,  East  and 
West,  with  intersecting  branches  affording  convenient  means  of 
passenger  and  commodity  transportation  to  all  parts  of  the  coun- 
try as  fast  as  they  are  settled ;  and  all  service  in  the  construction, 
operation  and  maintenance  shall  be  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the 
Transportation  Department  to  be  provided  for  by  general  law; 
and  all  persons  in  the  transportation  and  storage  departments 
shall  be  paid  out  of  government  funds  from  the  government  treas- 
urer, and  rates  of  transportation  shall  be  established  by  the  de- 
partment from  time  to  time  at  the  actual  cost  of  the  service 
as  determined  by  economic  statistics.  One  market  will  be  the 
same  as  all  others  and  there  will  be  little  occasion  for  individual 
transportation  of  products. 


CHAPTER  VII 

TELEGRAPHS  AND  TELEPHONES 

THE  government  will  establish  lines  of  telegraph  wire  and 
wireless,  and  telephones,  whichever  is  most  convenient  or 
economic,  upon  the  lines  of  all  railroads  and  other  public 
thoroughfares,  and  instruments  will  be  installed  and  operated 
and  exchanges  maintained,  in  connection  with  the  Postal  Depart- 
ment ;  and  all  such  service  shall  be  free,  except  that  individuals 
having  telephones  in  their  homes  shall  pay  the  government  the 


14  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

cost  of  their  construction,  and  all  persons  in  the  telegraph  and  tele- 
phone service  shall  be  paid  locally,  and  shall  be  under  civil  service 
rules,  and  their  compensation  shall  be  the  same  as  that  paid  for  all 
service. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

HIGHWAYS 

A  LL  highways  shall  be  under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  govern- 
/—\  ment  and  shall  be  surveyed,  opened,  improved  and  kept 
•*-  ^  in  the  very  best  condition  possible  under  the  control  of  the 
Bureau  of  Government  highways.  There  will  be  a  highway  com- 
missioner elected  annually  by  the  electors  of  each  township,  who 
shall  employ  all  labor  needed  to  make  and  maintain  and  improve 
all  needed  highways  within  the  township,  which  shall  be  laid  out 
by  the  county  surveyor  with  reference  to  the  highways  entering 
from  foreign  counties;  and  material  for  highway  construction  in 
all  parts  of  the  domain  will  be  shipped  by  the  operatives  of  the 
government  railroads ;  and  the  government  will,  through  its  appro- 
priate bureau,  provide  for  the  supply  and  shipment  of  all  needed 
highway  material,  and  all  service  in  all  departments  of  highway 
construction  and  maintenance  will  be  paid  at  the  legal  standard  of 
value  established  by  law  and  paid  at  stated  intervals  by  the  gov- 
ernment bank,  on  the  approval  of  the  local  auditor  where  the  ser- 
vice is  rendered. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  15 


CHAPTER   IX 

INTERNAL   IMPROVEMENTS   OF   GOVERNMENT   LANDS 
AND   WATERWAYS 

\  LL  unoccupied,  unentered  land  will  be  regarded  as  govern- 
/— \  ment  land  under  the  control  and  jurisdiction  of  the  general 
land  department ;  and  that  department  will  provide  for 
the  reclamation,  irrigation,  and  fertilization  of  all  such  land;  and 
extend  transportation  facilities  to  such  land  as  fast  as  they  are 
needed  for  actual  settlement.  This  department,  or  some  adjunct 
thereof,  will  have  the  control  of  all  waterways,  rivers  and  harbors, 
and  shall  conduct  their  improvement  in  all  ways  known  to 
engineering  science  to  promote  their  utility  and  their  beauty,  and 
such  service  in  all  departments  shall  be  rewarded  at  the  standard 
rate  and  in  the  same  manner. 


CHAPTER  X 

ELECTRICITY 

THE  government  will  establish  a  bureau  of  electricity  and 
electrical  engineering.  They  will  construct  upon  any,  and 
all  available  water  powers,  in  the  domain  of  the  com- 
monwealth, plants  for  the  generation  of  electricity,  and  where 
water  power  is  not  available,  they  will  supply  other  forms;  and 
they  will  supply  electric  power  for  all  purposes,  public  and  private, 
for  which  electricity  shall  prove  efficient,  and  fix  and  maintain 
a  just  and  uniform  rate  of  charge  for  all  power  or  light  delivered 
by  the  government  for  purely  private  use ;  but  they  shall  extend 
the  service  to  all  available  sections  of  the  commonwealth  as  fast 
as  it  is  practical  to  do  so ;  and  all  service  in  this  department  shall 
be  rewarded  in  the  same  measure  and  paid  in  the  same  way. 


i6  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

CHAPTER  XI 

CHARITY 

THERE  will  be  no  public  charity,  for  where  distributive 
justice  prevails,  there  will  be  no  ofiQce  for  charity  to 
perform.  The  human  family,  and  each  of  its  members, 
are  justly  responsible  for  the  social  conditions  which  call  for  the 
application  of  what  the  world  has  come  to  designate  as  practical 
charity ;  and  every  application  of  it  is  a  virtual  confession  of  a 
violation  of  humanitarian  duty.  Verily,  the  whole  human  family 
must  some  day  give  affirmative  answer  to  their  first  self-imposed 
inquiry,  "Am  I  my  brothers  keeper?" 


CHAPTER  XH 

FUEL   AND    LIGHTS 

THE  government  will  establish  a  department  of  fuel  and 
lights,  through  which  they  will  operate  and  develop  all 
coal  mines,  oil  mines,  and  conduct  experiments  for  dis- 
covering, developing,  and  transporting  all  kinds  of  fuel  for  all  pur- 
poses public  and  private ;  which  will  be  placed  within  the  reach  of 
all  citizens,  and  for  the  supply  of  all  public  use ;  the  cost  to  the 
private  consumer  to  be  fixed  by  a  just  economic  cost  of  production 
and  transportation,  which  shall  be  uniform  to  all  consumers  with- 
out reference  to  the  distance  from  which  it  is  transported,  as  the 
rate  imposed  will  be  based  upon  the  economic  cost  of  the  entire 
fuel  department. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  17 

CHAPTER  XIII 

STAPLE   AGRICULTURAL   PRODUCTS 

WHILE  it  will  be  the  policy  of  the  government  to  encour- 
age all  individual  enterprise  by  those  desiring  to  con- 
duct the  same  by  their  own  efforts,  with  such  service  as 
they  can  employ  at  the  standard  value  of  individual  service,  in 
view  of  the  manifest  economy  of  large  scale  operations,  it  is  appre- 
hended that  the  greater  part  of  the  agricultural  products  will  be 
produced  through  the  government  agencies.  To  that  end,  there 
will  be  a  government  agricultural  department  which  will  conduct 
the  business  of  producing  and  distributing  agricultural  products  to 
all  township  seats  of  the  domain,  and  these  agricultural  stations 
will  be  established  and  maintained  in  the  different  localities  of  the 
domain  with  reference  to  soil  and  climate  adapted  to  their  culture 
to  the  best  possible  state  of  perfection,  and  these  agricultural  sta- 
tions will  be  operated  and  maintained,  for  the  most  part,  by,  and  in 
connection  with  agricultural  schools  for  the  training  and  education 
of  the  youth  desiring  to  learn  the  art  of  agriculture.  But  the  agri- 
cultural activity  of  the  government  will  be  limited  so  far  as  prac- 
ticable to  securing  an  adequate  supply  of  agricultural  products  for 
the  needs  of  the  people,  thereby  supplying  any  deficiency  which 
may  result  from  the  failure  or  inadequacy  of  individual  enterprise, 
in  that  most  usejul  of  all  human  economies. 


i8  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

CHAPTER  XIV 

EDUCATION 

THERE  will  be  established  in  every  township  inhabited  by 
sufficient  of  the  people  of  suitable  age  to  justify,  such  num- 
ber of  primary  schools  as  the  electors  thereof  may  from 
time  to  time  determine  upon ;  which  will  be  maintained  at  govern- 
ment expense.  And  in  each  county  of  the  state,  there  will  be  one 
or  more  government  high  schools,  as  the  extent  of  population  shall 
render  necessary ;  which  shall  provide  free  tuition  for  all  scholars 
of  school  age,  and  free  maintenance  for  any,  who  by  misadven- 
ture, are  unable  to  find  homes  with  the  people  residing  accessible 
to  such  schools. 

There  will  also  be  established  at  suitable  locations  in  different 
and  suitable  localities  throughout  the  domain  of  the  inhabited 
commonwealth,  industrial  schools,  with  free  maintenance,  so  that 
every  graduate  of  the  high  school,  and  all  persons  under  thirty 
years  of  age  may  attend  these  schools ;  and  assist,  to  graduation,  in 
the  work  thereof ;  and  there  learn  to  do  and  perform  competently 
and  intelligently,  whatever  class  of  service  is  performed  in  all  de- 
partments of  industry  conducted  within  any  part  of  the  domain  of 
the  commonwealth.  All  of  the  high  and  industrial  schools  shall 
maintain  a  government  library,  which  shall  contain,  among  other 
things,  all  laws  in  force  in  the  domain  which  are  written,  and  the 
government  records,  and  they  shall  be  taught  as  a  part  of  the  cur- 
riculum of  said  school. 

There  will  be  government  colleges  and  institutions  of  higher, 
and  highest,  so-called  education,  maintained  at  government  ex- 
pense free  of  tuition  but  not  of  maintenance,  whereat  any  gradu- 
ate of  high  schools  may  learn  anything  that  is  taught  anywhere,  by 
anybody,  which  he,  or  she,  may  feel  like  wasting  their  time  upon. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  19 

Where  they  can  get  the  history,  to  the  minutest  frazzle  of  every 
dead  language  that  ever  died,  and  every  decomposed  atom  that 
ever  disturbed  the  justice  and  peace  of  mankind,  from  the  time 
Adam  and  Eve  backed  out  of  the  garden,  down  to  the  deportation 
of  the  disturbing  elements  which  left  our  shores  the  day  the  new 
nation  was  born. 


CHAPTER  XV 

CRIMINAL  LAWS   AND   PENAL  INSTITUTIONS 

THERE  will  be  elected  in  each  township  at  each  annual 
election  two  justices  of  the  peace ;  one  of  whom  shall  be  a 
father  and  the  other  a  mother,  but  both  shall  not  belong 
to  the  same  family.  There  shall  also  be  elected  two  conservators 
of  the  public  peace  of  like  opposite  sex  and  different  families, 
who  shall  be  the  executive  officers  of  the  local  township  courts. 

Each  conservator  shall  be  provided,  at  government  expense, 
with  an  iron  cage  which  shall  be  eight  feet  square,  and  capable  of 
being  moved  to  suit  the  exigencies  of  the  public  business,  and 
which  shall  contain  a  bunk  with  a  change  of  bedding  suited  to  the 
climatic  conditions.  It  shall  have  a  lock,  and  a  key  shall  be  kept 
and  worn  publicly  on  the  person  of  each  conservator,  which  shall 
be  the  insignia  of  the  office. 

There  shall  be  but  one  criminal  law  for  the  realm,  and  it  shall 
read  in  substance  as  follows,  to  wit :  —  Any  person  of  the  age  of 
discretion  who  shall  do  any  deliberate  or  wilful  act  to  injure  the 
person,  property,  or  good  name  of  any  other  person,  or  who  shall 
wilfully  and  deliberately  omit  to  do  and  perform  any  kindly  ser- 
vice to  a  fellow  mortal,  or  animal  in  distress,  or  who  will  treat 
any  animal  with  cruelty  or  injustice,  shall  be  guilty  of  a  misde- 
meanor. 


20  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

Upon  the  written  complaint  of  any  person  duly  sworn  or  af- 
firmed before  any  magistrate  of  the  township,  such  justice  shall 
issue  his  warrant  for  the  apprehension]of  the  offender,  who  shall 
be  arrested  by  a  conservator,  or  any  person  deputized  by  him,  or 
her,  for  that  purpose  and  brought  before  the  magistrate.  Such 
person  may  be  apprehended  without  warrant  by  any  person  who 
may  witness  the  offense  and  taken  at  once  before  one  of  the  mag- 
istrates. If  such  person  enter  a  plea  of  guilty,  he  shall  be  sen- 
tenced to  ten  days'  service  of  the  government,  and  the  conserva- 
tor shall  deliver  the  prisoner  to  the  custody  of  the  superintendent 
of  public  works  operating  nearest  the  place  of  apprehension.  If 
guilt  is  denied,  the  magistrate  shall  summon  a  jury  of  six  electors 
to  try  the  offender,  which  jurors  shall  be  the  judges  of  both  the 
law  and  facts,  and  if  the  offender  shall  be  adjudged  guilty  by  a 
majority  of  the  jurors  impanelled  to  try  him,  he  shall  be  sen- 
tenced in  like  manner. 

If  the  offense  be  one  which  destroys  or  menaces  human  life  or 
limb  or  inflicts  physical  bodily  injury,  the  defendant  shall  be  com- 
mitted to  the  government  hospital  for  the  insane  located  nearest 
the  place  of  apprehension,  there  to  remain  until  paroled  or  dis- 
charged as  cured;  the  people  recognizing  the  pathological  truth 
that  all  conditions  susceptible  to  conduct  theretofore  denominated 
crime,  manifests  a  specie  of  mania,  and  needs  to  be  treated  accord- 
ingly. 

Threats  of  personal  violence,  and  all  exhibitions  of  temper, 
likely  to  become  uncontrollable,  on  the  part  of  all  persons  above 
the  age  of  fifteen  years,  shall  be  regarded  as  premonitory  symp- 
toms of  mania,  and  shall  be  investigated  by  the  local  magistrates 
and  conservators  of  public  peace  and  safety ;  and  if,  on  investiga- 
tion they  shall  prove  menacing,  such  victims  shall  be  committed  to 
the  nearest  hospital  for  the  treatment  of  all  such  unfortunates. 

There  will  be  no  code  defining  crime,  but  all  acts  of  dishonesty 
or  immorality  will  be  recognized  as  evidencing  mental  and  moral 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  21 

depravity,  as  distinct  pathological  species  of  insanity;  and  per- 
sons afflicted  with  any  condition,  or  manifestation  of  that  disorder, 
will  be  confined,  or  restrained  and  treated  to  ultimate  recovery,  if 
possible,  by  any  process  known  to  science. 

The  following  acts  will  be  treated  as  conclusive  evidence  of  a 
dangerous  form  of  mental  and  moral  abberration,  needing  a  thor- 
ough and  systematic  course  of  treatment  in  governmental  hospitals 
for  the  cure  of  insanity :  Counterfeiting  the  government  currency, 
deliberate  fraud  or  dishonesty  in  any  department  of  the  public 
service,  electioneering  for  office  in  the  public  service  for  any  elective 
office  or  position  in  the  government  employ  (outside  the  civil  ser- 
vice), all  forms  of  bribery  to  effect  the  election  of  the  person  to 
any  elective  or  appointive  position,  all  forms  of  deliberate  fraud 
designed,  or  affecting  to  secure  advantage  of  another,  all  deliber- 
ate acts  performed  or  attempted  which  result,  or  are  calculated 
to  result,  in  injury  to  the  person,  property,  or  reputation  of  any 
citizen. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

GOVERNMENT  BUILDINGS.       ASSUMPTION   OF 
PUBLIC   DEBTS 

ALL  public  buildings,  state,  county,  township,  school  and 
municipal,  will  belong  to  the  government ;  which  will  as- 
sume all  of  the  public  debts  of  those  hitherto  political  sub- 
divisions; and  these  buildings  will  be  used  and  remodeled,  and 
others  constructed  as  the  needs  of  the  people  require. 

The  District  of  Columbia,  so  called,  will  forever  be  preserved 
as  a  government  museum.  Its  buildings,  and  statues  will  be 
embalmed  and  mummyized,  and  preserved  as  a  lasting  memorial 
of  the  monarchial,  aristocratic,  un-democratic  tendencies  and  obli- 


22  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

quities  of  the  nineteenth  century;  an  enduring  monument  to  the 
folly  of  partisan  politics;  and  the  so-called  White  House  will  be 
the  depository  of  billy  possums  and  teddy  bears. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

TOWNSHIPS 

THE  elective  government  officers  of  each  township  will  be  a 
mayor,  two  magistrates,  two  conservators,  one  auditor, 
and  one  supervisor  of  public  works  (highways),  and  a  pres- 
ident and  cashier  of  each  government  bank  outside  of  county  seat, 
each  of  whom  shall  be  elected  annually  by  the  electors  of  that 
township.  These  officers  will  take  the  oath  of  office,  but  will  give 
no  official  bond ;  they  will  be  authorized  to  employ  all  such  assist- 
ants, temporary  or  permanent,  as  the  public  business  of  their  re- 
spective departments  shall  require. 

The  mayor  shall  have  charge  of  all  government  buildings  with- 
in his  township,  and  shall  have  concurrent  jurisdiction  with  the 
justices  of  the  peace,  and  the  conservators  will  execute  his  pro- 
cess. 

The  supervisor  of  public  works  shall  have  charge  of  all  public 
works  in  his  township,  except  such  as  shall  be  under  the  direction 
of  the  government  bureau  of  public  internal  improvement,  and  he 
may  employ  all  assistants  necessary  to  keep  the  public  ways,  build- 
ings and  property  within  his  township  in  order  and  repair. 

The  auditor  will  examine  and  approve  all  accounts  of  all  other 
township  officers,  who  will  present  to  him  weekly  an  itemized 
statement  of  all  service  rendered  by  them  and  in  their  department, 
at  the  standard  fixed  by  the  government  in  all  departments  of  ser- 
vice, which  will  be  paid  by  the  government  cashier  of  the  county. 

The  government  will  establish  all  post  office,  postal  banks, 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  23 

and  telegraph  and  telephone  exchanges,  and  all  transportation 
depots  and  exchanges  within  the  township  but  the  post  and  depot 
master  therein,  and  the  president  and  cashier  of  all  government 
banks  outside  of  county  seat  shall  be  elected  by  the  people  of  the 
township,  and  all  employees  shall  be  under  civil  service  rules; 
but  shall  be  chosen,  so  far  as  possible,  from  the  eligible  lists  made 
up  of  residents  of  the  township,  and  all  service  accounts  within  the 
township  shall  be  approved  by  the  township  government  auditor 
tor  and  paid  by  the  government  cashier  of  the  county. 

There  will  be  maintained  in  the  relative  geographical  center  of 
each  settled  township  the  f ollowng  public  building :  a  government 
depot  and  department  store  convenient  to  the  means  of  rail  trans- 
portation, wherein  all  products  of  service  shall  at  all  times  be  kept 
for  sale  or  exchange ;  and  where  they  will  be  taken  by  the  govern- 
ment at  the  standard  economic  value  thereof,  as  fixed  from  time 
to  time  by  the  government  department  of  labor  and  transportation, 
so  that  if  the  individual  can  get  the  staple  necessities  and  luxuries 
of  life  at  the  government  department  store  better,  or  with  less  ser- 
vice and  greater  economy  than  they  can  be  produced  in  his  locality, 
he  will  be  able  to  do  so. 

The  government  will  at  all  times  be  advised  of  economic  and 
industrial  conditions  in  all  sections,  and  all  department  stores  will 
be  amply  provided. 

There  will  be  at  such  township  centers  buildings  and  ap- 
pliances for  all  forms  of  healthful  amusement  and  sport,  and  a 
theater  auditorium  for  all  purposes  of  public  lecture  and  amuse- 
ment ;  there  will  be  lines  of  electric  railroads,  and  all  forms  of  solid 
highway,  by  which  the  people  may  readily  and  conveniently  have 
means  of  conveyance  at  all  times  to  the  township  center. 


24  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE   COUNTY 

EACH  county  seat  will  be  located  as  nearly  as  possible  at 
the  geographical  center  of  the  county,  and  the  post  office 
and  Postal  Bank  will  be  located  thereat,  and  the  several 
townships  will  be  served  by  rural  post  and  package  delivery 
over  good  rural  highways  by  electric  and  automobile  conveyance 
under  the  civil  service  of  the  government. 

The  county  government  officers  elected  by  the  electors  will  be 
the  president  and  cashier  of  the  government  bank  for  the  county, 
judge,  auditor,  recorder,  and  the  surveyor  or  engineer,  and  the 
assistants  of  all  these  officers  will  be  under  the  civil  service. 

Women  will,  if  electors,  be  eligible  to  all  offices  in  government ; 
these  county  officers  shall  take  official  oath,  but  no  official  bonds 
will  be  required. 

The  post  master  will  have  charge  of  the  government  post  office 
supervising  the  outgoing  and  incoming  mail,  which  will  carry  all 
mailable  matter  weighing  five  pounds  or  less;  all  postal  service 
shall  be  free,  subject  to  the  reasonable  rules  of  the  government 
postal  department  to  provide  against  abuse  of  the  service. 

The  county  judge  shall  have  exclusive  jurisdiction  of  the  pro- 
bate of  wills,  record  of  which  will  be  kept  by  the  recorder,  gen- 
eral jurisdiction  of  equity  to  prevent  trespasses  to  property,  and 
compel  specific  performance  of  contracts  respecting  property  lo- 
cated within  the  county  and  general  jurisdiction  in  equity  accord- 
ing to  that  jurisprudence  at  the  date  of  the  formation  of  the  new 
government,  and  to  grant  divorces,  and  award  the  custody  of  chil- 
dren, appoint  guardians  therefor  and  provide  for  their  maintain- 
ence,  and  to  grant  administration  upon  the  estates  of  deceased 
persons. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  25 

His  court  will  be  known  as  the  Re-United  States  Court  for  his 
county,  and  will  hold  annual  session,  which  will  be  open  at  all 
times  when  the  public  business  requires  it.  He  shall  keep  account 
of  his  services  and  be  compensated  therefor  at  the  established  rate. 

The  county  auditor  will  audit  the  personal  accounts  of  all 
township  auditors,  and  will  check  up  and  file  and  preserve  the 
reports  of  all  township  auditors  for  three  years  from  the  audit 
thereof,  as  a  means  of  detecting  and  discovering  any  fraud,  mis- 
takes, or  irregularity  in  any  part  of  the  public  service  within  his 
county. 

The  government  cashier  will  have  the  control  and  manage- 
ment of  the  postal  bank  located  in  the  county,  under  the  rules  of 
the  banking  department  of  the  government,  and  he  will  examine 
and  approve  the  account  of  the  county  auditor  and  will  receive, 
disburse  and  account  for  the  funds  and  revenues  of  the  govern- 
ment passing  through  the  local  bank  under  the  rules  of  the  depart- 
ment. The  president  of  all  government  banks  will  have  general 
supervision  of  the  bank  of  which  he  is  elected  president  and  will 
make  weekly  reports  to  the  banking  department  of  the  government 
under  the  rules  thereof. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE   STATE 

THERE  will  be  no  state  governments.  The  elective  officers 
of  the  government  within  each  state  will  be  first,  the  two 
Governors  of  the  Re-United  States;  second,  a  superin- 
tendent of  each  government  industrial  school,  and  each  govern- 
ment hospital  for  the  treatment  of  the  insane  located  within  the 
state,  and  third,  five  government  visitors,  all  of  whom  shall  be 
elected  annually  by  a  majority  vote  of  the  electors. 


26  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

The  superintendents  will  be  designated  and  elected  for  the 
particular  school  or  hospital  located  within  the  state ;  and  it  shall 
be  their  duty  to  superintend  and  manage  such  hospital  under  the 
rules  and  regulations  established  by  law  and  the  department  of  the 
general  government  under  the  jurisdiction  of  which  they  are 
operated. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  government  visitors  to  visit  and  in- 
spect all  governmental  institutions  within  their  state,  and  all  other 
states  whenever  in  their  opinion  there  is  just  reason  to  believe  that 
the  efficiency  or  economy  of  the  public  service  may  be  improved 
thereby.  It  shall  be  the  duty  of  each  of  said  government  visitors 
to  suggest  from  time  to  time  to  the  board  of  governors  and  to  the 
head  of  all  governmental  departments  any  changes  or  improve- 
ments which  in  their  opinion  will  improve  the  efficiency  or 
economy  of  the  public  service. 


CHAPTER  XX 

GOVERNMENT   OFFICES   GENERALLY 

A  LL  officers  of  government  will  be  elected  by  the  people  of 
/  \  the  locality  wherein  they  serve.  They  will  swear  to  sup- 
-^  ^  port  the  laws  and  obey  the  lawful  command  of  any 
superior  officer  in  the  department  in  which  they  serve,  but  no 
official  bonds  will  be  required  in  any  department  of  the  public 
service.  All  officers  will  be  ex  officio  notaries  public  and  author- 
ized to  administer  oaths,  and  certify  the  acknowledgment  of  all 
instruments  entitled  to  record,  which  service  will  be  rendered  at 
all  reasonable  times  without  charge. 

The  government  will  provide  through  the  post  office  and 
banking  department  to  all  government  officers  and  employees  an 
annual  service  account  book,  wherein  it  will  be  the  sworn  duty  of 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  27 

each  person  to  keep  and  enter  a  strict  daily  account  of  all  public 
service  rendered  by  him  and  of  all  expenses  paid  by  him  in  the 
course  of  such  service;  and  this  book  shall  at  all  times  be  kept 
upon  his  person,  and  be  kept  in  duplicate,  one  to  be  all  the  time  in 
his  possession,  and  he  will  leave  them  alternately  with  the  auditor 
approving  his  public  accounts  at  the  stated  periods  provided  by 
law;  and  at  the  expiration  of  his  term  of  public  office  or  service, 
he  will  deliver  the  remaining  duplicate  to  such  auditor,  and  all 
ofl&cers  and  employees  in  government  service  shall  have  their  ser- 
vice and  expense  account  approved  by  the  auditor  of  the  town- 
ship in  which  they  reside,  and  the  service  of  all  of  them  shall  be 
compensated  at  the  established  legal  rate,  above  specified. 

Discharge  from  and  future  ineligibility  to  public  office  or  ser- 
vice, and  involuntary  treatment  in  government  hospitals  for  the 
deranged  and  degenerate  will  be  the  only  direct  consequence  of 
dishonesty,  immorality,  misfeasance  or  malfeasance  in  the  public 
office  or  service  of  the  people  and  all  government  service  in  all 
departments,  except  as  to  the  elective  officers  herein  provided  for, 
and  such  as  the  government  shall  hereafter  provide  for  by  general 
law  will  be  under  the  civil  service  rules  of  the  general  government. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

LEGAL   CONVEYANCING 

THE  government  will  provide  through  the  postal  or  bank- 
ing department  approved  forms  and  blanks  for  all  forms 
of  conveyance  and  incumbrance  of  possessory  rights  relat- 
ing to  land ;  and  the  recorder  or  surveyor  of  each  county  will 
furnish  the  exact  description  of  all  lands  in  the  county  which  are 
entered  for  occupancy;  and  these  conveyances  shall  be  uniform 
in  character.     Leases  of  lands  will  not  be  tolerated  for  any  purpose 


28  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

other  than  that  of  temporary  care  during  the  absence  of  the  settler, 
for  which  no  rent  can  be  reserved  or  exacted. 

Every  person  desiring  to  use  land,  or  erect  structures  of  any 
kind  for  his  personal  use  will  be  provided  with  ample  means  there- 
for by  the  government  through  the  local  bank,  so  that  there  will  be 
no  occasion  for  the  exaction  of  rents,  and  these  have  always  been, 
and  always  will  be,  so  long  as  tolerated  in  the  institutions  of  men 
or  angels,  instruments  of  extortion,  oppression  and  injustice,  and 
all  these  means  and  temptations  will  be  forever  removed  from  this 
people. 

Every  person  of  adult  age  will  have  his  own  home,  if  he  wishes 
to  maintain  a  home,  and  there  will  be  little,  if  any,  occacion  for  any 
system  of  legal  administration  of  the  estates  of  deceased  persons; 
for  aside  form  his  home,  he  will  have  only  personal  effects,  which, 
if  warned  of  the  approach  of  dissolution,  he  may  easily  and  readily 
administer  himself.  His  estate  will  consist  of  his  home  settlement 
and  his  certificates  of  service,  and  there  will  be  no  temptation  or 
occasion  for  his  children  to  bicker  about  his  estate. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

THE   PRACTICE   OF   LAW 

THE  laws  will  be  so  simple,  uniform,  and  easily  understood, 
the  statutes,  the  debates  of  all  public  questions,  and  the 
manner  of  their  settlement  will  be  in  the  government  libra- 
ries of  each  county,  in  all  high  schools,  industrial  schools,  and 
institutions  of  higher  education  and  will  be  taught  in  such  schools 
as  a  part  of  the  curriculum,  obviously  indispensible  to  good  citi- 
zenship. There  will  be  no  law,  and  no  legal  machinery  for  the 
compulsory  collection  of  debts ;  and  every  person  will  secure  their 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  29 

individual  favors  upon  his  or  her  honor  and  credit  as  good  citi- 
zens; the  loss  of  which,  in  the  community  in  which  they  live  and 
move,  would  be  inestimable,  irretrievable,  and  intolerable,  and 
would  be  the  most  condign  punishment  which  an  outraged  people 
could  possible  contrive  or  inflict. 

If  a  legal  profession,  as  a  distinct  parasitic  class  could  survive 
so  orderly  and  delectable  a  state  of  refined  and  civilized  society, 
its  functions  must  necessarily  be  confined  to  giving  advice  as  to 
rights  and  duties  among  a  people  suffering  under  some  dangerous 
manifestation  of  mental  and  moral  disorder  requiring  the  attention 
of  the  local  magistrates  and  conservators.  Goodby,  Pettifogger, 
you  will  do  well  to  write  your  obituary  and  your  epitaph,  embalm 
it  with  the  billy  possums  in  the  government  museum  in  the  Dis- 
trict of  Columbia,  and  look  for  some  department  of  useful  service 
in  which  you  can  make  amends  for  the  errors  and  indiscretions 
of  youth. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

RELIGION 

NO  religious  tests  will  ever  be  adopted  or  applied,  and  no 
form  of  worship  prescribed  or  prohibited,  and  no  day  will 
be  set  apart  by  law  upon  which  religious  observance  will 
be  made  compulsory ;  but  in  all  probability  the  people  will  con- 
tinue to  assemble  for  the  most  part  on  the  first  day  of  the  week, 
commonly  called  Sunday,  by  a  natural  human  instinct,  there  to 
worship  the  true  and  the  living  God,  from  whom  all  blessings  flow; 
and,  that  in  His  own  time,  that  service,  and  that  worship  by  all  His 
people  will  be  after  substantially  the  same  form  and  fashion  as 
will  naturally  be  dictated  by  the  enlightened  individual  conscience. 
Man  made  in  the  image  of  his  Creator  is  necessarily  a  worshipper 


30  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

of  his  Creator ;  he  cannot  be  otherwise,  and  he  may  as  well  confess 
it  before  the  world  one  time  as  another;  if  he  is  not  religious  he  is 
nothing. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

INSURANCE 

THE  government  will  insure  all  private  dwelling  houses  and 
the  contents  thereof  against  destruction  and  damage  by- 
fire,  or  other  casualty  at  the  actual  cost  as  determined  by 
the  statistics  of  the  government  insurance  department.  This 
department  will  be  in  connection  with  the  local  bank,  where  poli- 
cies will  be  provided  by  the  government,  which  will  describe  the 
building  and  contents,  which  the  applicant  will  cause  to  be  inven- 
toried and  appraised  by  two  competent  neighbors,  which  inventory 
will  be  attached  to  a  duplicate  policy  left  with  the  bank;  individ- 
uals conducting  private  business  of  any  description,  owning  busi- 
ness buildings  and  combustible  structures  or  material  may  take  out 
insurance  on  same  in  like  manner.  In  case  of  loss,  without  the 
fault  of  the  owner,  the  government  will  restore  the  loss  which  will 
be  adjusted  locally  through  the  postal  bank.  There  will  be  no 
occasion  for  life  insurance,  and  there  will  be  none;  there  will,  how- 
ever, be  government  insurance  against  accident  and  physical  in- 
firmity at  actual  cost  based  on  the  statistics  of  the  insurance 
department. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  31 

CHAPTER  XXV 

FIRE   PROTECTION 

THE  government  will  maintain  at  all  county  and  town- 
ship seats  and  at  the  seat  of  government  and  at  all  post 
offices  an  efficient  governmental  fire  department  and  ap- 
paratus for  the  protection  of  life  and  property,  which  will  include 
most  of  the  municipalities  of  the  domain;  this  department  will 
be  under  the  civil  service. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

MUNICIPALITIES 

MUNICIPAL  corporations  called  cities  will  be  provided 
for  by  general  uniform  laws,  but  there  will  be  no  corpor- 
ate officers,  and  no  corporate  government  distinct  from 
that  of  the  township  in  which  such  city  is  located.  All  local 
improvements,  except  such  as  the  government  make  uniformally 
in  all  townships,  will  be  made  by  the  inhabitants  in  any  manner 
and  to  any  extent  which  they  may  desire,  but  there  shall  be  no 
law  requiring  individual  contribution  or  assessment  of  individ- 
uals, or  of  individual  property  for  any  such  purpose.  The  gov- 
ernment will  furnish  iight,  power,  and  fuel  for  private  use  at  its 
economic  cost  wherever  it  is  practical  and  reasonably  economic, 
in  view  of  the  governmental  department  having  charge  of  that 
department  of  government  economy  and  enterprise  to  do  so,  and 
cities,  will,  so  far  as  reasonable,  be  afforded  these  just  facilities 
and  advantages. 

Congestions  of  population  in    large  cities  are    violative  of 


32  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

natural  law  and  social  economy.  They  are  fostered  and  pro- 
duced by  the  spirit  of  cupidity,  the  spirit  of  commercialism  and 
speculation,  the  get-something-for-nothing  principle  and  practice 
which  will  not  long  survive  the  advent  of  just  popular  government. 

It  is  the  rent-rackers,  the  usurer,  the  stock,  produce,  life, 
and  fire  insurance  gamblers,  and  the  endless  variety  of  specula- 
tors and  exploiters  of  the  long  suffering  people,  which  have  builded 
these  ancient  and  modern  temples  to  the  shrine  of  the  God  Mam- 
mon and  monuments  to  the  folly  of  all  men.  And  it  will  be  re- 
membered that  all  of  these  people  have  gone  over  to  enjoy  a 
season  of  pleasure  with  their  fellow  parasites  in  the  cities  of  the 
Old  World,  and  while  they  are  absent  the  bats  and  cockroaches 
will  no  doubt  move  their  cities  into  the  sea,  and  disinfect  the 
marts  of  the  buyers  and  sellers  for  profit,  and  the  money  changers, 
whose  arrangements  were  once  before  in  the  early  days  of  the 
Christian  era,  quite  unceremoniously  disarranged. 

With  no  rents,  no  interest  on  the  current  money  of  the  people, 
no  corporate  stocks  to  manipulate,  no  chance  to  bet  on  the  price 
of  produce,  for  its  economic  value  all  the  time  fixed  by  govern- 
ment statistics  and  exchanges,  and  the  producing  interest  of  the 
people  no  longer  compelled  or  inclined  to  support  a  large  element 
of  the  population  in  idleness  and  slothful  luxury  at  the  various 
seaports;  with  no  gold  or  other  money  exchanges  to  gamble 
over,  and  with  no  foreign  commerce,  except  to  take  our  surplus 
products  to  relieve  the  temporary  necessities  of  foreign  peoples 
who  are  unable  to  accomplish  justice  and  equality  at  home,  it 
is  happily  obvious  that  congestions  of  population  and  soul  searing 
extremes  of  poverty  and  squalor  on  the  one  hand,  and  idle  luxury 
and  profligacy  on  the  other,  will  immediately  and  automatically 
adjust  themselves. 

The  author  has  often  wondered  what  these  maniacs  of  the 
cities  would  do  if  the  farmers  of  the  country  were  to  telegraph 
down  that  they  had  decided  not  to  raise  any  more  produce  that 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  33 

season  than  they  needed  for  their  own  use ;  but  that  if  the  people 
down  there  would  come  out  to  the  farm  and  bring  their  market 
basket,  they  might  spare  them  suflScient  to  keep  them  alive; 
but  that  they  would  not  feed  them  at  the  seashore  any  longer,  as 
the  soil  was  being  impoverished  for  the  lack  of  natural  nutrition 
and  that  the  people  must  come  inland  and  live  on  the  land ;  that 
the  land  would  not  support  the  people  who  would  not  support 
the  land. 

No  clearer  or  truer  conception  of  the  utter  ineconomy  of  city 
life,  and  its  destruction  of  all  enduring  social  conservatism  is 
possible,  than  in  the  immortal  lines  of  the  poet  Goldsmith  in  his 
Deserted  Village,  which  we  recommend  all  people  to  read  and 
study.  It  sums  up  the  whole  chapter  of  human  folly  in  the 
destructive  and  soul  destroying  race  for  what  is  not  but  is 
called  wealth.  A  few  stanzas  from  this  immortal  poet  will  not 
be  untimely.    Listen ! 

"  Ye  friends  to  truth,  ye  statesmen  who  survey 
The  rich  man's  joys  increase,  the  poor's  decay. 
'Tis  yours  to  judge  how  wide  the  limit  stands 
Between  a  splendid,  and  a  happy  land. 
Proud  swells  the  tide  with  loads  of  freighted  ore 
And  shouting  folly  hails  them  from  her  shore. 
Hordes  e'e  n  beyond  the  miser's  wish  abound, 
And  rich  men  flock  from  all  the  world  around. 
Yet  count  our  gains,  this  wealth  is  but  a  name 
That  leaves  our  usetul  products  all  the  same. 
Not  so  the  loss ;  the  man  of  wealth  and  pride 
Takes  up  a  space  that  many  poor  supplied. 
Space  for  his  lake,  his  park  extended  bounds, 
Space  for  his  horses,  equipage  and  hounds. 
That  robe  that  wraps  his  hmbs  in  siken  cloth 
Has  robbed  the  neighboring  fields  of  half  their  growth. 


34  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

His  seat  where  solitary  sports  are  seen 
Indignant  spurns  the  cottage  from  the  green. 
Around  the  world  each  needful  product  flies 
For  all  the  luxury  the  world  supplies. 
While  thus  the  land  adorned  for  pleasure  all 
In  barren  splendor  feebly  waits  its  fall." 

In  view  of  the  industrial  and  social  revolution  which  the 
change  will  bring  about,  it  is  expected  that  there  will  be  no  large 
centers  of  population;  and  that  the  abandoned  farms  will  soon 
be  reclaimed;  and  beautiful,  commodious  homes  will  cover  the 
whole  face  of  the  land.  There  will  be  little,  if  any,  occasion 
for  any  extensive  or  complicated  system  of  municipal  law;  but 
whatever  is  needed  will  be  provided  by  the  legislative  department 
of  the  government  from  time  to  time.  Whatever  municipal  regu- 
lation is  made  by  law  will  be  uniform  and  of  universal  operation, 
and  no  local  forms  of  municipal  government  will  be  adopted  or 
tolerated. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

HOSPITALS   FOR   THE   INSANE 

THE  government  will  maintain  at  convenient  and  suitable 
localities  within  each  state  hospitals  for  the  care,  main- 
tainance,  and  cure  of  all  forms  of  insanity;  and  all  abnor- 
mal mental  or  moral  degenerates ;  which,  so  far  "as  possible, 
shall  be  conducted  on  the  plan  of  the  industrial  schools  wherein 
will  be  provided  employment  for  all  patients  whose  condition 
will  admit  of  their  being  employed. 

Those  afHicted  with  mental  or  moral  mania,  heretofore  re- 
garded and  treated  as  felons  or  criminals,  will,  if  possible,  be 
restored  to  health  and  to  citizenship ;  and  provision  will  be  made 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  35 

for  the  segregation  of  all  incurables  and  others  who,  at  any  time, 
or  for  any  reason,  it  is  proper  to  remove  from  the  society  of  other 
unfortunates.  These  institutions  will  be  in  charge  of  competent 
physicians  and  surgeons,  and  will  be  under  the  civil  service  rules 
established  by  the  general  government. 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

INDUSTRIAL  SCHOOLS 

THE  industrial  schools  of  the  government  will  conduct  all 
branches  of  agriculture,  manufacturing,  mining  and 
stock  raising  upon  and  connected  with  government  res- 
ervations, in  all  parts  of  the  nation  adapted  to  the  different 
industries,  and  will  be  conducted  on  a  scale  designed  at  all  times 
to  amply  supply  all  domestic  demands  for  all  products  not  sup- 
plied by  the  individual  effort.  The  product  of  these  schools  will 
be  distributed  by  the  transportation  service  of  the  government 
to  supply  all  government  department  stores  which  are  not  ade- 
quately supplied  by  individual  enterprise. 

The  utmost  systematic  efifort  possible  will  at  all  times  be 
applied  to  raise  the  standard,  increase  the  fertility  of  all  soil, 
conserve  the  forests  and  other  natural  resources,  and  promote 
the  general  efficiency  and  economy  and  renew  the  failing  strength 
of  the  soil  and  perpetuate  its  utility  for  all  coming  generations. 

They  will  promote  fish  culture  and  maintain  hatcheries,  and 
stock  all  streams  with  fish  capable  of  life  in  the  various  waters  of 
the  Commonwealth;  they  will  encourage  the  arts  and  inventions 
of  the  people  and  conduct  experiments  for  improvement  in  all 
economic  departments. 

The   Government   will,   at   all   times,    provide   that 

THERE    shall    BE    NO    ENFORCED    IDLENESS.      But     all    SUrplus 


36  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

labor  not  employed  in  production,  transportation  and  distribu- 
tion, and  in  the  various  useful  public  service  enterprises,  shall 
be  employed  in  internal  improvements  to  beautify  the  land  and 
render  it  ideal  for  the  habitation  of  man.  This  world  can  be 
made  a  veritable  Eden,  and  will  surely  be  so  made;  and  it  is 
only  necessary  to  systematize  the  service  of  the  people  to  accom- 
plish the  transformation. 

Man  is  naturally  active  and  industrious,  as  he  is  honest  and 
religious;  and  only  needs  an  opportunity  to  put  his  hand  and 
brain  to  the  task  that  nature  adapted  and  designed  him  to  per- 
form. There  is  no  task  so  menial  that  some  one  will  not  be 
found  who  will  volunteer  to  do  it,  for  the  pure  love  of  having  it 
done,  and  having  the  world  orderly  and  respectable.  When  a 
way  is  opened  to  all  people,  old  and  young,  to  learn  to  do  the 
thing  for  which  nature  adapted  them,  all  will  serve  with  pleasure 
and  contentment,  and  no  one  will  remain  idle,  but  all  will  will- 
ingly do  their  fair  share  of  the  world's  work  in  all  its  varied 
departments. 

A  six  hour  day's  service,  at  a  uniform  arbitrary  standard  of 
five  dollars  a  day  will  answer  every  purpose,  as  all  will  desire  to 
serve  six  hours  daily,  if  they  serve  that  day;  but  when  the  indus- 
tries are  once  thoroughly  systematized,  it  will  be  discovered  that 
one  hour's  service,  and  probably  less  than  that,  in  this  era  of 
invention  and  labor  saving  machinery,  will  supply  all  the  wants 
and  natural  desires  of  the  people,  and  the  rest  of  the  time  will  be 
devoted  to  improvement  of  our  homes  and  our  country,  to  add 
to  its  natural  attractiveness,  and  to  healthy  and  invigorating 
sports  and  the  cultivation  of  all  the  tastes  and  mental  desires  for 
personal  improvement  in  all  of  the  avenues  in  which  improve- 
ment is  desirable  and  possible. 

Man  is  essentially  a  social  being.  The  homes  will  be  con- 
tiguous to  each  other,  and  near,  or  reasonably  accessible  to  the 
places  of  their  employment;    they  will  improve  and  beautify 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  37 

their  streets  as  they  do  their  door-yards,  farms  and  gardens. 
Their  streets  and  parks  will  be  beautified  by  voluntary  service 
of  the  people,  and  no  system  of  compulsion  will  be  necessary  or 
required. 

The  facilities  for  the  abundant  supply  of  natural  wants,  and 
for  travel  and  transportation  will  be  such,  that  all  people  will  be 
enabled  to  have  their  summer  and  winter  cottages  at  all  desirable 
places,  upon  our  sea  coasts,  and  amid  the  romantic  scenes  of 
nature's  grandeur  inland,  which  will  be  prepared  and  adapted  to 
minister  to  the  highest  pleasure  of  which  humanity  in  this  sphere 
is  justly  capable. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

TAXATION 

A  LL  industries  and  activites,  other  than  those  which  are 
/  \  purely  personal  and  individual,  being  of  the  public 
■^  ^  service,  and  all  service  being  rewarded  in  government 
currency,  legal  tender,  always  interchangeable  at  a  just  and  uni- 
versal standard  fixed  by  the  average  utility  of  service  in  staple 
economic  production,  for  all  forms  and  varieties  of  service,  or 
the  fruits  and  products  thereof,  there  will  be  no  ofiice  for  taxa- 
tion to  perform ;  and  hence,  there  will  be  no  such  thing  as  taxa- 
tion of  either  person  or  property. 

There  will  be  no  need  of  government  revenues  for  any  element 
of  the  service;  for  the  government  is  the  whole  people,  and  the 
whole  people  is  the  government.  When  a  service  is  rendered 
the  whole  people,  they  give  the  person  who  performs  it  a  certifi- 
cate fixing  its  arbitrary  value,  which  corrresponds  to  the  value  of 
the  same  extent  of  service  in  all  other  departments;  and  may  be 
exchanged  for  it,  and  for  its  products.     Every  product  of  service 


38  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

in  the  stock  of  every  government  store,  at  the  seat  of  every  town- 
ship in  the  Commonwealth,  will  be  marked  at  the  exact  economic 
value  (cost)  of  that  product,  justly  equalized  to  all  parts  and  sec- 
tions based  upon  the  arbitrary  standard  of  five  dollars  for  every 
six  hour  day's  service  devoted  to  its  production,  transportation 
and  distribution.  And  every  human  being  performing  any  ser- 
vice in  the  whole  human  economy  of  the  entire  Commonwealth 
can  have  it  at  that  figure  and  pay  in  the  government  certificate 
of  his  own  service,  whether  that  service  is  rendered  to  the  govern- 
ment or  to  some  individual.  There  will  be  no  other  currency, 
and  no  other  medium  of  exchange,  and  gold  and  silver  will  be 
used  only  in  the  arts  and  mechanics. 

There  will  be  gold  statues  of  the  patriots  and  martyrs,  public 
servants  and  benefactors,  past  and  present.  When  some  Edison 
shall  have  invented  an  electrical  appliance  which  will  warm  and 
light  our  homes  and  propel  all  the  machinery  of  production, 
transportation,  and  distribution,  we  v/ill  build  his  statue  mag- 
nified a  hundred  fold.  We  will  construct  it  of  burnished  gold  and 
set  it  up  in  the  most  conspicuous  point  in  all  our  domain. 

When  a  Rockefeller  will  provide  the  system  which  will  light 
and  warm  our  homes  until  the  perfection  of  the  electric  era, 
when  a  Harriman,  or  a  Hill,  willl  perfect  for  us  a  system  of  travel 
and  transportation  which  will  practically  annihilate  the  distance 
between  our  homes  and  seashore,  and  place  the  products  of  all 
lands  in  our  township  department  stores;  in  short,  when  Genius 
personified  will  invent  and  apply  machinery  to  perform  all 
service  of  all  people  in  human  economy,  we  will  rise  up  and  call 
them  blessed,  and  erect  enduring  monuments  of  gold  to  their 
respective  memories  as  in  just  fufillment  of  His  word,  "He  that 
is  greatest  among  you,  let  him  be  your  minister,  (minister  unto 
you),  and  he  that  is  chiefest  among  you,  let  him  be  your  servant." 

In  this  system  there  is  no  function  for  internal  tax  imposition 
and  none  will  exist;  and  as  for  tariff,  impost  duty,  no  foreign 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  39 

country  can  bring  to  our  shore  the  things  which  we  produce  at 
home  so  cheaply  or  economically  as  we  ourselves  will  produce 
them.  These  foreign  countries,  unless  they  destroy  the  ships  of 
commerce  and  the  ocean  cables,  and  the  wireless  telegraph  sta- 
tions, and  censor  the  public  press  as  to  social  and  industrial  con- 
ditions in  America,  they  will  be  forced  to  follow  our  example,  or 
their  wealth  creating,  and  wealth  distributing  population  will 
leave  their  shores  like  rats  from  a  sinking  ship,  and  all  their  lands 
will  lie  waste  until  reclaimed  by  some  civilized  and  christianized 
human  society. 

Our  surplus  staple  products,  and  we  shall  always  have  a  sur- 
plus, will  go  gratuitously  to  any  part  of  the  earth  where  it  is 
needed  to  respond  to  the  cry  of  human  want  and  we  will  use  our 
lazy,  pestiferous  war  ships  for  that  purpose,  and  we  shall  have  no 
difficulty  in  effecting  a  just  economic  exchange  for  all  foreign 
products  which  we  are  not  able  to  provide  at  home ;  but  these 
will  be  rare  specimens  when  the  resources  and  ingenuities  of 
this  Yankee  nation  are  exhausted. 

In  this  view,  how  manifestly  useless  will  be  a  tariff.  We  need 
no  revenue,  in  the  sense  in  which  the  word  has  so  long  been  used 
by  the  folly  and  short  sightedness  of  primitive  man.  We  shall 
then  have  rendered  unto  Caesar  the  things  which  are  Caesar's, 
and  which,  in  original  form  bore  his  image,  and  will  be  far  along 
in  the  process  of  rendering  unto  God  the  things  which  are  His, 
a  people  redeemed  from  the  power  of  mammon,  and  mindful 
of  their  obligations  to  each  other,  and  to  Him  who  is  the  Author 
of  all  blessings,  the  Giver  of  every  good  and  perfect  gift. 


40  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

CHAPTER  XXX 

THE   PUBLIC   HEALTH 

ALL  resident  practicing  physicians  and  surgeons  within 
each  county  shall  constitute  the  board  of  health  of  such 
^  county,  and  they  and  their  resident  nurses  and  assistants 
shall  be  under  the  civil  service  of  the  government;  which  will 
establish  and  maintain  at  the  county  seat  or  other  necessary 
places  within  the  county,  efl&cient  hospitals  for  the  treatment  of 
all  persons  within  the  county,  who  in  the  judgment  of  the 
attending  physician  can  be  better  cared  for  than  in  their  own 
homes,  if  they  have  such  within  the  county. 

The  board  of  health  will  organize  annually  on  the  first  Monday 
in  January  of  each  year,  by  electing  one  of  their  number  Presi- 
dent, and  another  Secretary,  who  will  keep  the  record  of  the  board 
and  the  general  account  of  all  persons  in  the  service.  He  will  make 
out,  and  certify  to  the  township  auditor  all  of  their  board  and 
individual  accounts,  and  shall  keep  a  record  thereof  in  the  ofl5ce 
of  secretary  in  the  hospital,  for  all  of  which  books  and  stationery 
will  be  provided  by  the  government  through  the  postal  department. 

The  president  will  preside  at  all  meetings  of  the  board,  which 
shall  meet  at  the  rooms  provided  at  the  hospital  for  that  purpose. 
If  more  than  one  hospital  is  required  in  any  county,  it  will  be  pro- 
vided. Every  patient  will  be  permitted  to  select  his  or  her  own 
attendant,  physician  or  surgeon,  either  in  the  home  or  in  the  hos- 
pital. 

It  will  be  the  duty  of  the  board  and  of  each  individual  member, 
to  look  to  the  proper  sanitary,  and  hygienic  conditions  of  the  county 
and  procure  to  be  done  all  things  necessary  to  secure  the  public 
health.  The  county  will  be  divided  into  sanitary  districts  and  the 
board  will  assign  these  districts  to  its  different  members  whose 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  41 

peculiar  duty  it  will  be  to  look  after  the  sanitary  condition  within 
the  district  thus  specially  assigned  to  the  individual  member. 

They  will  have  authority  to  provide  all  things  needed  to  accom- 
plish this  just  end.  They  will  keep  individual  accounts  of  all  ser- 
vices and  all  personal  expense  incurred  by  them,  and  will  be  reim- 
bursed for  all  expense  and  rewarded  for  all  service  at  the  legal  rate 
prevailing  in  all  departments. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  board  of  health  and  of  each  member 
thereof  to  do  all  in  their  power  to  insure  and  preserve  the  public 
health  of  the  county,  so  far  as  their  combined  wisdom  can  promote 
that  end.  If  an  epidemic  of  any  form  of  contagion  shall  obtain  a 
foothold  among  the  people,  it  will  be  the  duty  of  the  board  to  make 
a  thorough  investigation  to  determine  its  cause  and  fix  its  responsi- 
bility if  possible,  upon  the  member  having  charge  of  the  district 
in  which  it  manifested  itself  or  the  physician  who  was  first  sum- 
moned at  its  outbreak ;  and  if  it  shall  be  found  that  the  fault  lies 
with  some  member  of  the  board  he  may  be  punished  in  the  discre- 
tion of  the  majority  of  the  board  by  depriving  him  of  his  service 
compensation  to  a  reasonable  extent  and  for  a  reasonable  time; 
or,  if  they  deem  the  offence  of  sufficient  magnitude,  they  may  expel 
him,  or  her,  from  membership  which  will  disqualify  them  to  prac- 
tice until  they  shall  have  been  restored  to  fellowship  which  may  be 
done  at  any  time  by  any  board  of  health. 

The  board  of  health  will  issue  all  marriage  licenses  upon  exam- 
ination of  the  applicants,  and  will  so  far  as  possible,  provide  against 
marriages  which  shall  be  likely  to  prove  unhappy  by  reason  of 
physical  or  mental  or  moral  conditions  which  shall,  in  their  judg- 
ment, be  likely  to  result  unjustly  to  the  parties  contracting  and 
desiring  to  consummate  such  marriages,  or  the  offspring  thereof; 
but  they  shall  have  no  authority  to  prevent  or  prohibit,  but  may 
only  counsel  and  advise  against  them. 

They  will  provide  an  orphanage  adjunct  to  the  hospital  for  the 
care  and  nurture  of  all  children  who  cannot,  for  any  reason,  find 


42  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

homes  among  the  people ;  and  they  will  be  given  lawful  authority 
to  provide  against  cruelty  and  injustice  to  all  children  within  their 
jurisdiction,  even  to  the  point,  if  need  be,  of  taking  them  from  the 
custody  of  parents  who  are  unwilling,  or  unable,  or  unfit,  to  treat 
them  justly  and  humanely. 

They  will  keep  a  record  with  proper  index  of  all  marriages  with- 
in the  county  and  of  all  births  within  their  jurisdiction  which  rec- 
ord of  births  shall  be  made  by  the  parents  or  attending  physician 
as  soon  as  the  child  is  christened,  so  that  the  full  name  may  appear 
in  the  record ;  and  all  marriages  will  be  solemnized  by  a  minister 
of  the  gospel,  who  will  make  record  thereof  and  file  a  copy  of  such 
record  with  the  secretary  of  the  board  of  health. 

Whenever  the  judge  of  the  county  shall  notify  the  board  of 
health  that  an  application  or  petition  has  been  filed  in  his  Court 
for  a  divorce,  the  board  of  health  shall  appoint  a  male  physician  to 
examine  the  husband,  and  a  female  physician  to  examine  the  wife, 
whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  make  such  examination  and  look  into  all 
the  circumstances  of  the  family,  including  the  children,  if  any,  and 
give  the  judge  such  information  as  he  may  desire  in  the  dis- 
charge of  his  judicial  duty  respecting  the  divorcement  of  the  par- 
ents or  the  custody  of  the  children. 

Whenever  notified  or  called  upon  by  any  magistrate  or  conserva- 
tor, or  mayor  of  any  township  in  the  county  having  in  custody  or 
under  consideration  any  subject,  patient  or  person  charged  with 
being  dangerous  to  the  public  peace,  or  by  any  member  of  the 
board  of  public  safety  provided  for  in  the  succeeding  chapter,  it 
shall  be  the  duty  of  the  board  of  health  to  appoint  three  compe- 
tent physicians,  reference  being  had  to  the  sex  of  the  subject  or 
patient,  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  make  a  thorough  examination  of 
such  subject,  and  give  all  such  advice  and  assistance  to  any  of  said 
public  functionaries  as  they  shall  desire,  to  enable  them  to  dis- 
charge their  official  duties  in  the  premises. 

The  board  will  preserve  in  the  office  of  the  secretary  a  com- 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  43 

plete  inventory  of  all  medicines  and  hospital  supplies  and  all  sur- 
gical instruments  and  appliances,  none  of  which  shall  be  taken 
from  the  hospital  except  upon  a  written  order  of  the  secretary, 
and  for  the  most  temporary  emergencies. 

The  boards  of  health  will  correspond ;  and  by  means  of  the 
reports  and  inter-communications,  maintain  a  uniform  system  of 
practice  and  secure,  so  far  as  possible,  the  adoption  and  promul- 
gation of  uniform  rules  and  appliances,  in  all  cases  the  best  and 
most  approved  which  Science  can  devise,  for  the  treatment,  and 
cure,  and  care  of  the  afflicted  among  the  people  of  the  new  Nation. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

THE   PEACE   OF   SOCIETY 

THE  attorneys  and  counselors  at  law  resident  within  each 
county  shall  ex  officio  constitute  the  county  Board  of  pub- 
lic peace  and  tranquillity.  They  will  organize  on  the 
first  Monday  in  January  of  each  year  by  electing  one  of  their  num- 
ber President  and  another  Secretary.  The  President  will  preside 
at  all  meetings,  and  will  call  meetings  at  the  court  room  of  the 
county,  whenever  the  public  business,  as  hereinafter  defined,  shall 
require.  The  Secretary  will  keep  and  record  the  record  of  all  the 
proceedings  of  the  board,  and  check  up  and  approve  to  the  town- 
ship auditor  all  accounts  for  service  and  expense  of  the  board  and 
the  individual  members  thereof,  upon  blanks  and  in  books  pre- 
pared for  that  purpose  by  the  government  and  distributed  for  the 
use  of  the  service  through  the  postal  department. 

Whenever  it  shall  come  to  the  knowledge  of  the  board,  or  any 
individual  member  thereof,  that  any  controversy  has  arisen  in  the 
county  between  persons  respecting  any  property  rights,  or  any 
violation  of  the  laws  of  the  Commonwealth,  written  or  unwritten, 


44  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

which  is  likely  to  be  brought  to  the  attention  of  the  local  court; 
it  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  person  possessed  of  such  knowledge  to 
immediately  notify  the  President  of  the  board,  who  shall  at  once 
call  a  meeting  of  the  Board  of  Public  Peace,  whose  duty  it  will  be 
to  proceed  to  select  a  committee  of  three  members  or  such  other 
number  as  that  there  shall  be  one  to  interview  each  party  to  the 
controversy,  and  one  umpire;  and  if  the  member  reporting  the 
case  shall  have  been  retained,  or  advised  with  by  a  party  to  the 
controversy,  he  shall  be  a  member  of  the  committee. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  this  committee  to  proceed  at  once  to 
visit  the  parties  to  the  controversy,  and  they  may  employ  and  take 
to  their  assistance  the  pastor  of  the  church  or  churches  to  whom 
any  or  all  of  the  parties  to  the  controversy  belong,  and  learn  the 
whole  state  of  the  controversy  so  far  as  possible,  and  endeavor  to 
reconcile  the  parties  and  effect  the  adjustment  of  the  controversy 
upon  terms  which  shall  be  just  and  reasonable  so  far  as  they  can 
find  means  and  influence  to  accomplish  it. 

If  this  committee  and  the  pastor  or  pastors  taken  to  their  assist- 
ance shall  agree  unanimously  as  to  the  basis  upon  which  the  con- 
troversy should  be  settled  and  reconciled,  they  shall  make  known 
to  the  parties  their  plan  for  its  reconcihation ;  and  if  either  party 
shall  refuse  to  adjust  it  upon  the  basis  proposed,  they  will  bring  it 
to  the  attention  of  the  local  magistrate  or  magistrates  of  the  town- 
ship wherein  the  parties  reside  for  an  investigation  into  the  state  of 
the  mental  and  moral  condition  of  such  recalcitrant  party  or  par- 
ties in  the  manner  provided  by  law,  and  if  this  does  not  result  in  the 
amicable  adjustment  of  the  controversy  appeal  or  resort  may  be 
had  to  the  local  court. 

If  the  committee  shall  not  be  unanimous  as  to  the  basis  of 
adjustment,  they  will  report  back  to  the  board,  which  will  take  up 
and  discuss  the  merits  of  the  controversy  and  determine  by  major- 
ity vote,  after  full  discussion,  the  just  basis  for  its  adjustment,  and 
record  their  decision  in  the  minutes;    and  the  secretary  shall  forth- 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  45 

with  furnish  each  party  to  the  controversy  with  a  copy  of  the  de- 
cision of  the  board  certified  by  him. 

If,  notwithstanding,  the  parties  or  either  of  them  is  determined 
to  go  to  law,  the  proceedings  of  the  board  and  the  record  thereof 
shall  be  at  the  disposal  of  the  county  judge  to  assist  him  in  the 
discharge  of  his  judicial  duties  in  the  premises. 

If  at  any  time  there  shall  be  any  false  alarms,  or  false  and  un- 
founded reports  of  controversy  where  none  on  investigation  is 
found  to  exist,  the  president  will  order  an  investigation  of  the 
reporter  if  he  be  a  member  of  the  board,  and  if  it  shall  be  found  that 
there  has  been  any  negligence,  dishonesty,  or  reprehensible  con- 
duct on  the  part  of  such  member  in  starting  an  investigation  of  a 
controversy,  where  no  real  controversy  existed,  the  board  shall 
proceed  to  discipline  such  member  by  depriving  him  of  compensa- 
tion for  public  service  in  such  board  for  such  time  as  to  them  shall 
seem  reasonable,  or  they  may  expel  or  suspend  him  from  the  exer- 
cise of  public  functions  on  the  written  approval  of  the  county 
judge,  of  which  suspension  record  shall  be  made  by  the  board,  but 
such  member  may  be  reinstated  or  restored  to  favor  at  any  time  by 
majority  vote  of  that  or  any  other  like  board  whenever  his,  or  her, 
moral  condition  shall  be  such  as  to  make  it  consistent  with  the  pub- 
lic service. 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

INTOXICANTS   AND   ALCOHOLIC   LIQUORS 

IT  will  be  the  duty  of  the  board  of  health  of  each  county  to 
immediately  invoice,  appraise,  and  take  into  their  possession 
and  store  at  the  county  hospital  all  impure  or  adulterated 
beverages  of  any  kind  found,  or  at  any  time  imported  in  the  county, 
and  issue  their  order  upon  the  cashier  of  the  local  bank  in  pay- 
ment therefor  at  their  fair  value  for  any  use  to  which  they  can  be 


46  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

safely  applied ;  and  the  manufacture  or  presence  of  such  impure  or 
adulterated  liquors  or  beverages  will  no  longer  be  tolerated  in  the 
Commonwealth. 

No  public  places  for  the  drinking  of  intoxicants  will  be  toler- 
ated and  no  liquors  will  be  drank  at  the  place  where  they  are  sold 
or  kept  for  sale,  except  that  those  who  in  good  faith  keep  hotels  and 
eating  houses  and  cafe  and  dining  cars  for  the  accomodation  of  the 
public  will  serve  liquors  with  meals  and  at  their  respective  tables 
but  not  otherwise. 

Whenever  it  shall  be  discovered  that  any  person  is,  for  any  rea- 
son, incapable  of  using  alcoholic  beverages  without  injury  to  him- 
self or  his  family  or  the  members  of  society  in  which  he  or  she 
mingles,  the  attention  of  the  local  magistrate  shall  be  called  to  the 
fact  and  they  shall  at  once  investigate  the  case  and  if  it  shall  appear 
to  the  authorities  that  such  person  is  in  that  unfortunate  condition, 
the  means  provided  by  law  for  his  treatment  and  cure  shall  at 
once  be  applied  and  a  cure  effected  if  possible.  If  the  victim  is 
incapable  of  cure,  so  as  to  prevent  recurrence  of  the  mania, 
certificate  to  that  effect  shall  be  made  by  the  local  board  of  health, 
and  a  copy  thereof  duly  certified  shall  be  filed  with  the  board  of 
any  and  all  counties  into  which  that  victim  shall  establish  his 
abode. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  all  persons  engaged  in  the  sale  of  intoxi- 
cating beverages  to  be  at  all  times  advised  of  the  state  of  the  record 
of  the  board  of  health  respecting  such  unfortunates,  and  it  will  be 
unlawful  to  sell  or  give  them  liquors  which  will  intoxicate.  If  they 
violate  this  rule  of  public  duty,  they  will  not  be  permitted  longer 
to  deal  in  that  commodity  in  the  Commonwealth,  and  will  them- 
selves be  subjected  to  treatment  for  degenerates,  for  they  will  have 
transgressed  the  penal  code  of  the  people. 

No  person  will  treat  another,  or  urge  or  invite  another  to  in- 
dulge in  any  form  of  intoxicants,  except  in  the  home  and  private 
dwelling  of  the  host ;  and  all  persons  at  all  times  will  practice  and 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  47 

inculcate  the  just  principles  of  temperance  in  all  things,  including 
the  use  of  spiritous  liquors. 

All  things  in  the  universe  of  God,  and  in  the  realm  of  material 
worlds  was,  in  the  deliberate  judgment  of  the  Author,  designed  by 
a  munificent  Creator  for  some  just  and  essential  use ;  and  alcoholic 
spirits  is  one  of  those  things:  But  it  taxes  the  mental  capacity  to 
its  utmost  limit  to  determine  the  utility  and  economy  of  many 
things,  which  are  seemingly  destructive  of  human  happiness,  and 
in  this  class  also,  must  distilled  or  fermented  spirits  be  placed. 
But  to  conclude  that  because  of  its  susceptibility  to  abuse,  and  its 
capacity  to  cause  human  anguish,  it  is  not  a  component  element 
of  God's  plan  of  creation  and  human  development,  and  of  the  nat- 
ural evolution  of  man  through  the  lower  and  higher  kingdoms  of 
the  material,  to  the  spiritual  universe,  which  is  the  end  and  ulti- 
mate of  the  material,  involves,  in  my  humble  opinion,  not  only  an 
impeachment  of  the  judgment  of  man,  but  of  the  wisdom  of  his 
Creator. 

"  And  I  gave  my  heart  to  seek  and  search  out,  by  wisdom  con- 
cerning all  things  that  are  done  under  heaven;  this  sore  travail 
hath  God  given  to  the  sons  of  men  to  be  exercised  therewith." 
(Ecclesiastes  i  :i3.) 

"Consider  all  things  and  hold  fast  that  which  is  good."  It  is 
not  him  who  is  kept  from  temptation,  by  himself,  his  parents,  his 
friends,  his  soveriegn,  or  his  God,  but  it  is  him  that  overcometh  that 
is  to  receive  the  Crown  of  life.  It  is  not  him  who  knows  not  evil, 
who  is  kept  from  contact  and  experience  with  it,  the  only  process 
by  which  in  the  providence  of  God  he  can  know  it,  but  it  is  him 
that  overcometh  and  withstandeth  it,  that  is  at  last  to  receive  the 
reward  of  the  just. 

These  are  subjects  somewhat  digressing,  but  so  vital  in  all 
considerate  discussions  of  modern  social  science  that  the  digres- 
sion must  be  overlooked.  "Judge  not,  that  ye  be  not  judged", 
applies  as  well  to  God's  material  elements  as  to  those  whom  He 


48  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

created  in  His  own  image  from  such  elements;  and  it  is  much 
safer  to  declare  at  all  times,  and  with  just  reference  to  all  things, 
that  "  God  is  good,  and  all  is  for  the  best." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 

LEGISLATIVE  AND    JUDICIAL   FUNCTIONS   OF  THE 
RE-UNITED  STATES 

THE  Study  of  the  system  of  home  rule  and  home  govern- 
ment which  the  preceding  chapters  have  outlined  will 
disclose  to  any  mind  at  all  familiar  with  social  govern- 
mental functions,  and  the  practical  exercise  of  these  functions, 
that  when  once  this  plan  is  in  operation  the  legislative  and  judi- 
cial functions  of  the  board  of  governors  of  the  Commonwealth 
will  be  perfunctory  merely,  and  will  lie  practically  dormant  and 
that  the  only  live  functions  will  be  administrative. 

No  appropriations  will  be  needed  or  required.  There  will  be 
no  settlement  for  individual  occupancy  of  the  parts  of  the  public 
domain  at  any  time  required  in  the  large-scale  operations  of  the 
agricultural,  manufacturing  and  mining  departments ;  for  the  gov- 
ernment will  own  most  if  not  all  of  the  homes  wherein  the  persons 
temporarily  engaged  in  that  department  will  be  maintained ;  for 
it  will  soon  be  discovered  that  the  youth  availing  themselves  of  the 
privileges  of  the  industrial  schools  operated  in  connection  there- 
with will  perform  the  larger  part  of  the  service  not  performed  me- 
chanically. 

So  that  few  homes  will  be  permanently  established  at  the  site 
of  these  industries. 

The  large  portion  of  the  people  will  all  the  time  be  engaged  in 
individual  pursuits  and  maintain  their  homes  wherever  their  fancy 
shall  lead,  and  with  these  exceptions  all  persons  will  be  under  the 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  49 

civil  service,  and  new  enterprises  will  be  confined  to  internal  pub- 
lic improvement  of  the  waste  places  to  fit  them  for  settlement  as 
the  population  increases,  and  in  all  manner  of  internal  improve- 
ment ;  but  this  will  be,  for  the  most  part,  initiated  and  carried  far- 
ther by  the  various  permanent  departments  which  from  time  to 
time  the  government  will  create  and  install. 

The  general  policy  and  in  fact  the  uniform,  universal  policy, 
will  be  to  encourage  and  promote  individual  initiative  and  enter- 
prise, but  all  the  time  to  improve  the  whole  Commonwealth  to  the 
full  limit  eventually,  and  at  all  times  apply  all  surplus  service  (I 
dislike  the  word  labor)  to  some  useful  or  ornamental  public  im- 
provement, to  the  just  end  that  there  shall  never  again  in  Amer- 
ica be  the  shame,  and  lasting  historic  disgrace,  of  enforced  idleness, 
with  all  of  its  inseparable  and  horrid  concomitants. 

Every  community,  every  civil  division  will  justly,  promptly  and 
effectively  regulate  its  own  conditions  and  people  by  means  at  all 
times  available  and  efficient.  The  causes  of  discord  in  human 
society  will  be  at  once  and  forever  removed.  The  causes  of  evil 
lie  not  in  man,  hut  about  him.  Every  man  is  as  he  is,  as  a  necessary 
consequence  of  the  tendencies  under  which  he  was  born  and  the 
circumstances  and  environment  under  which  he  was  reared ;  like 
any  other  product  of  nature,  he  is  neither  praiseworthy  for  being 
what  the  world  calls  good,  or  blameworthy,  or  other  than  unfor- 
tunate, shall  he  develop  to  be  what  the  world  calls  evil. 

There  will  be  but  little  written  law,  and  little  use  for  that ;  but 
we  shall  always  have  government  of  the  most  efficient  variety. 
There  will  be  no  war  and  nothing  to  war  about.  Peace  will  be 
natural  and  universal.  We  will  disband  all  standing  armies  and 
stack  the  munitions  of  war  in  public  arsenals;  we  may  maintain 
for  a  time  the  old  system  of  training  in  the  use  and  manual  of  arms 
to  provide  against  a  possible  foreign  invasion,  which  there  is  scarce- 
ly the  slightest  reason  to  apprehend. 

There  will  be  national    holidays  commemorating  the  great 


50  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

events  in  the  political  history  of  this  nation,  but  the  greatest  of  all 
will  be  that  which  commemorates  our  discovery  of  the  primal 
cause  of  our  political  and  industrial  thraldom,  and  the  application 
of  the  remedy  for  its  permanent  cure. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

INVENTIONS   AND   COPYRIGHTS 

ALL  inventions  will  be  registered  by  the  government  in  the 
name  of  the  inventor ;  and  will  be  tested  by  the  govern- 
^  ment.  If  in  the  judgment  of  the  department  of  inven- 
tions they  promise  utility  or  economy  they  will  be  adopted  and 
become  the  property  of  the  government. 

If  they  shall  prove  of  utility  and  practicability,  the  same  will 
be  appraised  according  to  its  economic  utility,  and  the  inventor 
will  be  given,  by  a  grateful  commonwealth,  an  inventor's  medal  in 
recognition  of  his  service  to  his  country,  and  a  certificate  showing 
the  economic  value  of  his  invention  or  improvement,  which  shall 
entitle  him  to  receive  the  economic  value  of  his  invention  in 
monthly  installments  at  the  standard  rate  of  service,  except  that 
such  certificates  shall  be  personal  to  the  inventor  and  nothing 
shall  be  paid  after  his  death,  the  purpose  being  to  place  such  in- 
ventor on  the  pay  roll  as  well  as  honor  roll  for  the  remainder  of 
his  natural  life  in  just  recognition  of  the  fact  that  by  his  intelli- 
gence and  study  and  personal  effort,  he  has  performed  his  just 
share  of  service  in  the  social  economy  and  may  justly  go  on  the 
retired  list.  If  the  invention  is  other  than  labor  saving,  but  yet 
of  public  utility,  its  economic  value  may  for  all  just  purposes  be 
limited  to  the  standard  value  of  individual  service  for  the  remain- 
der of  the  expectancy  of  life  of  the  inventor. 

All  original  compositions  in  whatever  form  may,  if  desired 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  51 

by  the  author  for  commercial  purposes,  be  registered  and  copy- 
righted, though  it  is  unlikely  that  many  will  desire  to  preclude 
others  from  reproducing  their  writings  if  suitable  credit  and 
recognition  is  given  the  author;  and  no  one  would  be  so  foolish 
or  unjust  as  to  plagiarize  the  writings  of  another  and  attempt  to 
secure  a  credit  which  is  not  his  own. 

There  is  no  avenue  of  escape  from  the  universe ;  and  individ- 
ual man  cannot  afford  to  do  an  unjust  or  ungenerous  act ;  for  the 
memory  and  consciousness  of  that  act  will  be  ever  present  with 
him,  and  from  its  presence  he  can  never  escape.  He  will  be  honest 
with  himself  and  with  all  men,  when  the  conditions  are  such  that 
justice  and  life  may  go  hand  in  hand. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE   INTERNATIONAL   MARRIAGE 

AT  a  general  election  of  the  electors  of  the  territory  em- 
braced within  what  is  to  constitute  the  Re-United  States 
of  America,  which  will  be  held  on  the  Tuesday  after 
the  first  Monday  in  November,  191 2,  the  people  of  the  Common- 
wealth which  is  to  be,  will  assemble  at  their  accustomed  voting 
places  in  each  township  and  determine  by  their  ballot,  which  will 
be  taken  and  recorded  in  the  manner  provided  by  law,  whether 
or  not  the  new  government  will  be  formed. 
The  ballots  will  read  as  follows : 

The  New  Columbia Yes. 

The  New  Columbia No. 

and  when  the  vote  is  canvassed  it  will  be  discovered  that  in  the 
whole  domain  there  will  not  be  a  dissenting  vote  or  voice. 

All  elections  thereafter  will  be  held  annually  on  the  first  Men- 


52  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

day  of  October  to  insure  fine  weather  for  our  wives,  mothers  and 
daughters  to  grace  the  election. 

All  ofl&cers  and  public  service  employees  of  the  people  in 
office  at  the  date  of  the  election  in  November,  191 2,  will  remain 
in  service  until  the  new  government  regime  is  ushered  in,  which 
will  be  on  the  first  Monday  of  January,  1914;  and  the  election 
of  officers  under  the  New  Columbia,  the  Re-United  States,  will 
be  held  on  the  first  Monday  of  October,  1913. 

The  symbolic  marriage  of  the  peoples  of  the  Northern  and 
Southern  sections  of  the  new  Columbia  will  be  solemnized  on  the 
4th  day  of  July,  1913.  And  for  the  purposes  of  this  symbolic 
union  Mr.  Canada  will  be  chosen  by  the  Canadian  Parliament, 
and  Miss  Columbia  by  the  Congress  of  the  United  States.  The 
marriage  Contract,  the  ante-nuptial  agreement,  shall  embody 
the  fundamental  essential  outline  of  the  new  Columbia  govern- 
mental plant  and  machinery  and  will  be  preserved  in  the  archives 
at  Sioux  City,  the  new  seat  of  the  government.  The  ceremony 
will  be  performed  at  or  near  the  center  ot  the  Suspension  Bridge 
which  spans  the  Niagara  River  below  the  Falls  facing  the  Horse- 
shoe, which  has  always  been  the  insignia  of  fortune.  It  will  be 
solemnized  at  high  noon,  under  the  auspices  of  the  Ministry  of 
the  Gospels  of  all  peoples  within  the  new  domain,  in  such  manner 
as  the  reverent  servants  of  God  shall  themselves  prescribe.  It 
will  be  celebrated  in  a  spirit  of  the  most  solemn  and  holy  reverence 
in  the  blessing  of  Almighty  God  upon  a  redeemed  and  united 
people ;  but  without  the  shadow  of  pomp  or  pageantry,  the  sound- 
ing of  brass  or  the  tinkling  of  cymbal ;  and  by  the  grace  of  God 
and  with  the  benediction  of  Heaven,  that,  "Whom  God  hath 
joined  together  let  not  man  put  asunder."  The  anthem  which 
shall  precede  the  wedding  march  from  the  extremes  of  the  span 
of  Niagara  will  be  "America"  in  the  human  voice  and  with  the 
humble  prayer  of  the  assembled  multitude. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  53 

CHAPTER  XXXVI 

THE   TRANSITION 

THE  advent  of  the  new  social,  political,  and  industrial 
regime,  will  break  upon  the  people  as  benignly,  and  with 
much  the  same  enthusiastic  welcome,  as  would  greet  a 
shaft  of  pure  sunshine  through  a  London  fog. 

The  discussion  and  public  consideration  which  will  precede 
the  marriage  of  these  peoples,  and  the  joining  of  farms  under  one 
management,  will  bring  the  whole  people  to  a  knowledge  of  all 
of  the  essential  laws,  and  the  simple,  practical  system  by  which 
the  economics  of  the  whole  people  are  to  be  conserved.  Every 
child  of  the  state  will  know  his  whole  duty,  and  just  how  to  dis- 
charge it  without  fear  or  friction,  and  what  is  still  more  felici- 
tous, that  duty  will,  for  the  most  part,  lie  right  before  his  face, 
and  within  easy  reach  of  his  hand. 

The  most  cursory  self-examination  will  convince  each  indi- 
vidual member  of  the  Commonwealth  that  he  is  bound  to  be 
happy,  in  the  assurance  that  all  are  to  be  as  secure,  as  free,  as 
independent,  and  as  happy  as  he,  and  none  more  so. 

No  human  being  worthy  the  name,  would  ever  admit  to  him- 
self, much  less  to  the  members  of  his  family,  and  the  circle  of  his 
acquaintances,  that  he  was  not  content  that  all  men  and  all 
women  should  enjoy  the  same  measure  of  happiness  and  content- 
ment and  security  that  he  himself  enjoys. 

But  above  and  beyond  all  purely  selfish  personal  interests, 
he  will  discover  and  be  fully  assured  that  his  children,  and  their 
children  are  absolutely  and  forever  insured  against  poverty  and 
want ;  that  gaunt  spectre  whose  horrid  form  and  withering  visage 
has  haunted  the  day  and  night  dreams  of  every  thoughtful  parent 
since  the  dawn  of  human  history.      That  ever-present  night- 


54  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

mare  which  has  caused  father  and  mother  to  toil  and  save  and 
sacrifice  for  the  security  of  their  offspring,  when  oftener  than 
otherwise,  that  very  sacrifice,  shall  they  secure  what  the  world  once 
called  wealth,  will  cause  the  degeneracy  and  destruction,  body 
and  soul,  of  the  very  child  or  children  in  whose  behest  they 
made  it. 

Teach  your  child  to  love  his  God  and  his  native  land;  to 
know,  and  respect  and  obey  her  just  mandates,  then  fit  him  for 
useful  service  in  the  industrial  economy  of  his  country,  his  pater 
and  alma  mater,  and  the  task  is  done ;  and  you  can  die  in  peace, 
knowing  that  a  just  government  will  care  for  those  you  love  as 
matter,  not  of  charity,  but  of  cheerful  duty  and  fidelity  to  a 
sacred,  solemn  trust. 

The  change  in  the  motives  of  men  will  be  revolutionary,  but 
the  change  in  their  occupations  will  be  hardly  perceptible  in  the 
general  classes  into  which  the  industrial  arrangement  thereto- 
fore existing  had  divided  then. 

Every  individual,  however,  will  be  perfectly  free  to  select  the 
department  of  useful  employment  in  which  it  is  a  pleasure  for 
him  to  serve.  No  one  will  be  compelled  to  perform  a  service 
which  is  distasteful. 

The  same  useful  service  will  go  forward  with  less  hours  of 
labor,  of  course,  but  the  same  thing  v/ill  be  done  in  much  the  same 
manner,  and  by  the  same  people,  so  far  as  it  is  pleasurable  for 
them  to  serve  in  that  field  of  social  and  industrial  economy. 

The  change  instead  of  losing  employment  to  any  living  being, 
will  immediately  accelerate  the  movement  of  all  things  in  all 
forms  and  departments.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  useful  to  go  home 
(in  contemplation)  after  the  election  of  the  new  government  is 
assured,  and  see  what  will  happen.  Everybody  in  the  county 
will  have  abundant  credit,  for  it  will  be  certainly  known  that 
every  one  will  be  able,  and  disposed,  to  justly  meet  every  personal 
obligation  which  they  will  care  to  assume. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  55 

One  of  the  first  results  will  be  that  the  local  merchant  will 
mark  up  every  article  in  his  stock  to  the  figure  of  its  economic 
value  as  measured  by  the  service  involved  in  its  production  at  the 
standard  which  he  figured  the  government  will  establish  when 
production  and  distribution  is  systematized.  He  can  do  this  with 
reasonable  accuracy,  for  there  have  long  been  available  statis- 
tics in  the  census  department,  and  a  day's  service  means,  in 
figures,  and  in  the  currency  that  will  be,  five  dollars. 

The  result  will  be  that  the  gentleman  heretofore  irreverently 
discussed  by  unstatesmanlike  politicians  as  Mr.  Over-Produc- 
tion,  will  depart  out  of  our  midst  and  register  in  some  foreign 
land  as  Mr.  Under-Consumption.  The  next,  or  concomitant, 
manifestation  in  the  local  marts  will  be,  that  before  the  govern- 
ment department  store  can  be  builded  and  equipped,  the  shelves 
of  the  local  distributors  (merchants)  will  be  empty,  and  temporary 
supply  stations  will  be  used  until  the  township  department  store 
can  be  constructed.  This  store  will  be  the  distributing  station 
for  the  township,  with  all  needed  branches  from  time  to  time,  to 
suit  the  convenience  of  the  people. 

The  business  of  the  department  store  or  stores  of  the  townships 
will  be  conducted  by  the  same  people  who  theretofore  served  in 
the  same  business  in  the  same  locality,  and  to  the  individual, 
the  change  will  be  no  more  perceptible  than  that  of  moving  out 
of  one  building  into  another,  except  that  all  will  serve  shorter 
hours,  and  receive  uniform  compensation,  always  secure,  always 
prompt,  and  always  certain ;  and  nothing  to  distract,  and 
nothing  to  guard  against,  but  a  failure  of  plain  and  simple  duty 
of  honest  service  to  a  generous  and  just  people. 

Prices  of  all  staple  commodities,  product  of  agriculture, 
manufacture  and  mining,  will  be  fixed  from  time  to  time  by  the 
department  of  service  at  the  seat  of  government  upon  economic 
statistics;  and  will  be  posted  at  every  store  and  branch  in  all  the 
land.     All  other  things  will  be  left  to  the  taste  and  fancy  of  the 


56  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

people,  those  who  produce  and  those  who  use,  but  the  natural 
tendency  will  operate  to  bring  the  result  of  all  service  to  its  measure 
of  value,  in  view  of  the  service  involved  in  its  creation  with  little, 
if  any,  regard  to  the  material  from  which  it  is  constructed,  ex- 
cept that  art,  talent  and  personal  excellence,  will  always  have 
monopoly  and  always  should,  for  that  is  the  God-given  incentive 
to  improve  in  every  avenue  of  human  endeavor. 

The  banking  business  will,  of  course,  be  entirely  revolution- 
ized. There  will  be  no  government  debt  and  no  government 
bonds,  or  any  other  bond.  The  government  will  no  longer  en- 
dorse and  engrave  the  notes  of  national  banks  which  bear  no 
interest,  and  suffer  them  to  loan  them  to  an  afBicted  people  at 
interest ;  that  business  will  no  longer  be  tolerated ;  and  those  who 
have  heretofore  enjoyed  that  special  privilege  will  be  ashamed 
to  be  longer  connected  with  it,  since  they  see  its  obvious  in- 
iquity, but  the  banking  business  will  still  go  on.  There  will 
be  more  of  it  under  the  new  than  under  the  old,  and  it  will  be 
conducted  in  the  same  manner  by  the  same  men  in  the  same  lo- 
cality after  as  before  marriage.  The  only  difference  will  be 
there  will  be  no  interest  accounts,  and  no  dividend  statements; 
but  in  all  other  respects,  the  business  will  be  precisely  the  same. 
It  will  be  like  quitting  one  bank  and  going  at  once  into  the  employ 
of  another. 

The  local  president  and  cashier  will  be  elected  by  the  people 
of  the  county,  or  township,  if  more  than  one  bank  is  operated 
in  the  county,  his  assistants  will  be  under  the  civil  service,  but 
it  will  take  all  the  bankers  and  bank  clerks  and  helpers  and  then 
some,  to  do  the  legitimate  banking  business  of  the  county.  The 
insurance  men  will  work  in  an  adjunct  of  the  local  bank  and  that 
is  about  as  far  as  they  will  be  affected,  except  that  instead  of  un- 
certain commissions,  they  will  be  paid  for  their  services  like  all 
persons  in  government  employ. 

Then,  as  theretofore,  the  farmer  will  bring  his  product  to  the 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  57 

store  and  take  its  economic  value  in  currency,  or  exchange  it  for 
whatever  his  fancy  shall  choose,  and  always  at  its  economic  value, 
which  will  be  the  same  everywhere.  In  short,  the  transition 
will  be  as  imperceptible,  and  as  painless,  as  the  process  whereby 
the  caterpillar  becomes  the  butterfly,  relieved  of  the  necessity 
of  grovelling  in  the  dust  or  struggling  with  his  fellow  men  in  the 
competitions  of  the  organized  antagonism,  miscalled  human 
society,  and  spreading  his  wings  in  the  sunshine  of  perfect  in- 
dustrial freedom. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 

THE   RETURN   OF  THE   PILGRIMS 

THE  travelers  will  return  from  the  excursion  in  suflScient 
time  before  the  international  marriage  and  bring  with 
them  the  remnant  of  the  gold  and  silver,  which  will  be 
taken  to  the  national  museum  in  the  District  of  Columbia  and 
melted  up,  and  with  the  silver  they  will  construct  the  base  of 
three  monuments,  one  at  the  entrance  of  the  museum  commem- 
orating the  landing  of  Columbus,  the  other  two,  one  on  each 
shore  of  the  Niagara  River  just  below  the  Falls.  The  gold  will  be 
for  the  statues,  one  of  Columbus  at  the  museum,  one  of  Wash- 
ington on  what  is  known  as  the  American  shore,  and  the  other 
upon  the  Canadian  shore,  of  such  patriot  and  statesman  as  that 
people  shall  delight  to  honor. 

Having  provided  these  materials  and  testimonials  to  the 
virtues  of  these  servers  of  humanity,  they  will  severally  gravi- 
tate to  their  appropriate  places  in  the  new  governmental  econ- 
omy, as  naturally,  and  delightedly,  and  felicitously,  as  a  country 
lad  ever  selected  his  partner  for  the  cotillion  that  comes  in  the 
wake  of  the  country  husking. 


58  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

These  men  will  be  the  most  useful  of  all  classes  in  the  new 
regime;  for  they  are  trained  to  systematic  methods  of  thought 
and  action.  In  fact,  they  were  the  Very  System  Itself  at  the  time 
of  their  departure  abroad. 

They  can  readily  and  easily  take  the  whole  system  of  manu- 
facture, mining,  agriculture,  transportation  by  land  and  water, 
education,  internal  improvement,  civil  service  in  all  depart- 
ments, and  so  systematize  the  whole  social  and  industrial  ma- 
chinery so  that  every  cog  will  come  to  its  appropriate  bearing 
and  perform  its  perfect  function  in  the  entire  economy. 

They  can  tell  you,  from  the  books  and  records,  every  day,  and 
every  hour  of  the  day,  if  any  person  in  any  department  of  the 
service,  anywhere,  is  remiss  in  his  duty,  and  tell  you  when,  and 
where,  and  who,  and  where  he  is. 

If  there  is  disorder,  inharmony,  or  injustice  to  anybody,  or 
anything,  anywhere,  they  will  locate  it  for  you. 

The  farm  is  here,  the  seed  is  here,  all  things  in  abundance 
for  all  purposes  are  at  hand,  and  system  is  all  that  is  required 
to  secure  the  usefulness  and  happiness  of  all  people,  and  the  men, 
the  intellect  which  has,  in  the  face  of  the  most  complex  disad- 
vantages and  incongruities  builded  up  the  great  industries  of  the 
country,  can  be  depended  upon,  when  these  unnatural  conditions 
are  removed,  so  that  social  economy  can  prevail,  that  they  will 
use  all  the  service  to  promote  the  common  weal,  and  supply  the 
wants  and  gratify  the  natural  desires  of  all.  They  will  syste- 
matize both  the  labor  and  the  leisure  and  provide  for  its  just 
distribution. 

They  will  produce  in  the  greatest  abundance;  and  from  the 
surplus  of  service  available,  will  make  of  our  land  the  veritable 
Eden  of  promise.  A  Morgan  in  supervision  of  the  banking 
department  of  the  government  would  provide  that  its  currency 
was  so  distributed  at  all  times  and  places  as  that  all  the  conditions 
would  be  met  with  the  utmost  promptness  and  efficiency.     A 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  59 

Harriman  or  a  Hill  in  charge  of  the  railroads  and  transporatation 
department  would  give  us  a  railroad  wherever  one  was  needed, 
and  a  service,  and  equipment  that  would  be  the  wonder  of  all 
worlds;  would  provide  for  the  distribution  of  the  products  of 
service  to  all  parts  of  the  domain,  so  that  everything,  would  be 
everywhere  and  that  no  want  would  be  unsupplied.  A  Wana- 
maker  could  tell  him  what  was  going  to  be  required  in  all  times, 
and  in  all  places  long  enough  in  advance  so  that  there  would 
be  no  failure  to  meet  all  economic  conditions. 

The  master  mind  that  can  plan  and  execute  the  modern  folly 
of  a  presidential  political  campaign,  and  provide  agencies  in 
every  nook  and  cranny  of  this  nation,  for  seeing  every  man  seven 
times  a  week,  for  four  months  preceding  an  unpleasantness, 
getting  his  opinion  as  to  all  men  and  all  measures,  and  learning 
how  he  was  going  to  vote,  before  he  had  fully  made  up  his  own 
mind,  could  take  every  man,  woman  and  child  of  this  nation, 
and  put  them  in  their  proper  sphere  in  social  economy,  and  know 
all  the  time  that  they  were  doing  their  duty,  and  that  society  was 
showing  them  due  respect  and  recognizing  their  service,  by  se- 
curing their  rights  and  liberties,  and  affording  them  equal  oppor- 
tunity for  supplying  their  needs  from  the  common  store  of  the 
fruit  of  just  and  orderly  economic  service. 

It  is  too  clear  for  argument  that  with  the  facilities  now  in 
hand  and  within  easy  reach,  "equal  suffrage,  equal  rights  and 
responsibilities,  and  equal  opportunities  for  all  men  and  women" 
are  as  practicable,  as  they  are  just,  in  popular  government.  It 
is  simply  a  matter  of  system,  a  matter  of  book-keepimg.  All 
ser\dce,  no  matter  in  what  department,  adds  to  the  common 
stock,  and  augments  the  common  wealth,  not  in  money;  money 
is  not  wealth,  never  was,  nor  indeed  ever  could  be,  and  except 
so  far  as  it  can  be  justly  said  to  be  a  government  certificate  of 
service,  it  is  nothing. 

If  gold  were  piled  mountain  high  on  this  continent,  it  would 


6o  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

not  only  not  increase  the  wealth  of  this  nation,  but  it  would 
destroy  every  vestige  of  its  utility,  and  along  with  it  the  lives  of 
the  people.  Service  is  the  only  thing  that  is  valuable,  and  ser- 
vice is  the  only  just  standard  of  value,  and  the  product  of  service 
is  the  only  wealth,  and  service  the  only  source  of  wealth,  no  matter 
what  form  that  wealth  may  assume  in  human  economy  and  in  the 
institutions  of  men.  When  the  individual  has  served  the  gov- 
ernment, the  people,  the  commonwealth,  and  received  from  that 
government  the  current  certificates  of  such  service,  the  incident 
is  closed ;  it  is  what  in  the  commercial  world  hitherto  would  be 
called  a  cash  transaction;  neither  is  the  richer  or  the  poorer 
and  exact  and  even  justice  is  accomplished,  for  that  certificate 
enables  the  bearer  to  exchange  it  for  its  economic  value  with 
any  other  member  of  the  body  politic.  In  popular  government, 
the  people  are  both  sovereign  and  servant,  and  the  government 
embodies  the  collective  entity,  and  the  plant  and  machinery  the 
agencies  and  functions  through  which  the  collective  enterprise 
is  conducted.  As  respects  foreign  powers  and  sovereignties  the 
government  is  the  collective  corporate  entity  with  which  such 
foreign  business  is  transacted.  But  as  respects  all  internal 
policy  and  relations,  government  and  all  of  its  functions  and  ap- 
pliances, is  simply  and  solely,  when  reduced  to  final  analysis, 
a  matter  of  keeping  of  the  company's  accounts. 

The  government  is  the  planter,  the  domain  the  plantation, 
and  the  people  are  the  servants  (I  dislike  the  word  slaves).  The 
planter  permits  the  servant  to  select  his  home  on  the  plantation 
and  conduct  thereon  such  improvements  as  he  desires,  and  may 
permit  him  to  conduct  all  such  individual  enterprises  on  land 
selected  and  used  by  him  as  may  suit  his  fancy.  If  he  produce 
more  than  his  individual  needs  require,  he  turns  the  surplus  into 
the  store  of  the  planter  and  received  therefor,  in  some  form  of  pay- 
ment or  exchange,  the  economic  value  of  what  he  has  produced. 
If  he  serve  the  planter  in  any  department  of  plantation  enterprise. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  6i 

the  planter  rewards  his  service  according  to  its  just  meed,  if  he 
is  a  just  planter.  If  this  service  results  in  a  commodity,  product, 
it  goes  into  and  forms  a  part  of  the  stock  of  the  plantation  store. 
If  it  is  in  the  department  of  improvement  of  the  plantation,  the 
building  of  the  road,  the  clearing  of  the  forest,  the  draining  of 
the  land,  their  irrigation,  or  landscape  gardening,  the  planting  of 
trees  or  flowers,  it  adds  to  the  economic  value,  and  even  the  com- 
mercial value,  if  the  plantation  were  the  subject  of  barter  and  sale. 
If  the  planter  were  just  with  his  servants,  he  would  reward 
him  for  all  service  which  he  renders,  and  in  so  doing  would  not 
impoverish  himself  in  the  slightest  degree.  All  that  he  gave  to 
the  servant  in  reward  of  his  service  would  remain  with  him,  in 
the  product  of  such  service,  or  in  the  increased  value  of  his  plan- 
tation ;  and  in  the  succeeding  chapter,  it  is  our  purpose  to  show 
by  illustration,  perfectly  comprehensive  to  those  at  all  familiar 
with  double  entry  systems,  just  how  the  government  books 
might  be  kept,  although  there  is  little  occasion  for  any  such  com- 
plete system  as  might  be  maintained,  as  the  items  of  merchandise, 
and  profit  and  loss  will  soon  be  discovered  to  be  a  matter  of  the 
most  supreme  indifference,  beyond  the  satisfaction  of  exhibiting 
our  balance  sheeet  to  foreign  visitors,  who  will  only  need  to  look 
at  our  country  and  people  to  be  amazed  at  our  prosperity. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 

DOUBLE  ENTRY  BOOKS  OF  THE  GOVERNMENT 

THE  assets  of  the  plantation  will  comprise,  under  the  gen- 
eral head  of  merchandise,  the  public  lands  and  fixtures; 
and  under  the  head  of  bills  receivable  the  aggregate  of 
the  value  of  the  service  of  the  citizens  figured  on  the  basis  of  five 
dollars  for  each  working  day  from  the  age  of  eighteen  to  fifty- 


62  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

eight.  We  will  assume  tor  the  purposes  of  illustration  that  these 
two  items  in  the  inventory,  at  the  time  of  commencing  business 
and  opening  the  ledger,  is  One  Trillion  Dollars,  which  makes  up 
the  credit  side  of  the  ledger. 

For  the  purpose  of  exact  system,  there  will  be  issued  current 
service  certificates  in  denominations  convenient  in  the  transac- 
tion of  the  business  public  and  private,  which  will  go  into  the 
various  depositories,  a  corresponding  amount  which  will  be 
charged  and  carried  on  the  debtor  side  of  the  ledger  as  cash. 

There  is,  therefore,  always  a  balance  between  cash  and 
merchandise  and  this  balance  will  be  maintained  in  the  follow- 
ing manner.  Every  time  a  citizen  is  added,  either  by  naturali- 
zation, or  arrival  at  majority,  merchandise  will  be  credited  with 
the  aggregate  value  of  his  services  and  cash  will  be  charged  a 
corresponding  amount  to  maintain  the  exact  equilibrium;  and 
whenever  a  citizen  is  lost  by  death  or  removal,  merchandise  will 
be  credited  for  the  unpaid  service  as  inventoried,  and  cash  is 
charged  a  corresponding  amount  which  is  taken  from  the  depos- 
itory and  permanently  retired.  The  trial  balance,  the  profit  and 
loss  account  therefore,  will  depend  at  all  times,  solely  and  alone, 
upon  the  increase  and  decrease  of  citizenship.  In  the  social 
and  industrial  economies,  no  account  will  be  taken  of  land  occu- 
pied by  the  individual  citizen  or  devoted  to  the  private  use  of  the 
citizen,  but  there  will  always  be  a  private  debtor  and  credit 
account  between  the  citizen  and  the  government,  in  order  to 
maintain  the  equilibrium  of  the  government  ledger  into  which 
the  service  of  every  citizen  and  the  cash  which  represents  that 
service  are  necessary  elements. 

That  account  will  also  stand  at  all  times  on  a  balance  and 
will  be  made  up  in  the  following  manner.  He  will  be  charged 
with  the  inventory  value  of  his  service  as  credited  to  merchandise 
on  the  government  ledger,  and  will  be  credited  with  cash  on  de- 
posit with  the  government  for  the  corresponding  amount  as  it 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  63 

also  stands  charged  to  government  as  against  his  services  on  the 
plantation  government  ledger. 

Every  day  that  the  citizen  serves  his  own  private  interests  or 
refrains  from  service,  the  government  day  book  show  merchan- 
dise credit  five  dollars  charged  to  profit  and  loss,  and  credit  five 
dollars,  also  charged  to  profit  and  loss,  and  the  individual  account 
stands  John  Doe,  Dr.,  five  dollars  cash  retired,  and  Cr.  five  dol- 
lars merchandise,  also  retired. 

The  government  loses  the  service  and  retires  its  value  from 
the  inventory  of  assets,  and  the  cash  which  represents  it  is  re- 
tired from  circulation,  thus  balancing  the  books  of  the  Common- 
wealth, and  of  course,  the  individual,  who  in  the  social  economic 
sense,  represents  both,  loses  both,  except  if  he  plants  flowers  in 
his  garden  he  will  have  their  presence  and  their  fragrance ;  if  he 
takes  his  family  for  an  outing  he  will  have  the  pleasures  of  this 
excursion  and  its  memories  as  among  the  experiences  of  his  life. 

If  the  individual  serves  the  public  in  any  capacity,  it  will  go  on 
the  books  of  the  government  after  this  wise :  Merchandise  (Com- 
monwealth) will  be  charged  five  dollars  and  five  dollars  will  be  cred- 
ited to  cash.  Merchandise  (Betterment)  five  dollars  will  be  cred- 
ited to  John  Doe,  and  he  will  be  charged  five  dollars.  If  the  indi- 
vidual out  of  product  of  his  individual  effort,  or  from  the  fruit  of 
his  individual  land,  or  the  product  of  his  manufactory,  brings  to  the 
government  store  product,  and  exchange  it  for  product  of  like 
economic  value  as  fixed  by  the  industrial  statistics  at  the  time,  it 
will  be  treated  as  a  purely  cash  transaction  not  affecting  any  eco- 
nomic change.  The  government  store  will  keep  but  two  general 
double  entry  accounts,  cash  and  merchandise,  and  the  varieties  of 
merchandise  will  be  wholly  unimportant.  If  the  individual  takes 
cash  for  his  product,  government  merchandise  will  be  charged  and 
government  cash  credited,  and  the  department  store  books  will 
contain  the  corresponding  entry. 

If  one  individual  serve  another  in  his  private  business,  whether 


64  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

paid  in  currency,  or  product,  that  will  effect  no  economic  change 
and  require  no  entry;  the  system  being  all  the  time  to  have  the  cur- 
rent circulating  medium  (the  money,  if  you  wish  to  call  it  money) 
correspond  at  all  times  with  the  inventory  value.  Of  course,  when 
two  individuals  exchange  work,  so  to  speak,  for  general  economic 
purposes,  the  value  of  these  services,  and  the  cash  which  such  ser- 
vice represents  in  the  general  inventory,  goes  out  of  the  Common- 
wealth, and  must  be  retired  from  both  sides  of  the  ledger  to  main- 
tain the  equilibrium. 

At  each  annual  election,  and  in  connection  therewith  the  census 
of  citizenship  will  be  taken,  for  every  citizen  will  be  registered  so 
as  to  determine  at  the  close  of  the  current  electoral  year,  the  exact 
citizenship  and  the  trial  balance  will  then  be  made  up  at  that  time 
by  citizenship  only;  the  increase  will  be  credited  to  the  bills  paya- 
ble account  of  merchandise,  and  the  corresponding  amount  will 
be  charged  to  cash,  and  currency  service  certificates  will  be  placed 
in  the  government  depositories. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 

THE   FINANCIER 

THE  financier,  and  especially  those  of  what  is  known  as  the 
high  variety,  the  professional  financier,  who  has  made 
finance  the  study  of  his  life,  will  at  once  inquire  how  is  the 
government  going  to  make  any  profit  out  of  all  this  business  and  all 
of  this  book-keeping?  The  answer  is  ready,  and  it  is,  that  profit 
is  not  the  purpose  of  government;  at  least,  not  that  of  just  govern- 
ment. That  the  only  excuse  for  government,  its  only  office  or 
function  is  to  secure  the  well-being  of  both  its  sovereign,  its  sub- 
jects, and  its  servants,  the  whole  people. 

To  provide  that  system,  and  maintain  it  at  all  times,  so  that 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  65 

each  sovereign,  each  servant  may  be  free  to  serve  wherein  he  can 
serv^e  with  pleasure  to  himself,  and  justice  to  his  fellows,  and  be 
secure  in  the  just  fruits  and  meeds  of  that  service  in  whatever 
department  of  human  endeavor  he  may  choose  to  serve.  Every 
child,  every  embryonic  potentiality  of  citizenship  shall  be  secured 
an  opportunity  to  learn  the  whole  realm  and  round  of  industrial 
economic  utility;  and  having  learned,  to  choose  his  occupation 
and  qualify  himself  for  its  duties  and  be  assured  an  opportunity 
to  serve  in  that  department  when  it  is  desirable  or  necessary  for 
him  to  serve,  in  order  to  supply  his  wants  and  those  dependent 
upon  him  in  his  domestic  relations. 

But,  Mr.  Financier  will  say,  you  have  in  the  new  order  of  gov- 
ernmental arrangement,  assumed  large  state  and  municipal  inter- 
est bearing  obligations,  and  your  government  was  owing  billions 
already  of  its  old  debt,  which  like  the  others,  and  the  interest  on 
them  all,  are  payable  in  gold  coin,  the  only  lawful  and  ultimate 
commodity  in  which  they  are  redeemable,  and  where  is  Shylock 
going  to  get  his  pound  of  flesh,  if  the  government  is  not  operated 
for  profit  ? 

The  answer  is  equally  at  hand.  He  is  going  to  be  paid  in  flesh 
unless  he  will  compromise  for  the  products  of  service ;  and  if  he 
demands  gold,  he  cannot  have  either  flesh,  nor  the  product  of  the 
service  of  flesh,  FOR  ALL  THE  GOLD  HE  EVER  HAD,  OR 
EVER  COULD  HAVE,  IS  OF  LESS  INTRINSIC  VALUE  IN 
HUMAN  ECONOMY,  AND  AS  RESPONSIVE  TO  HUMAN 
WANT,  THAN  ONE  BARREL  OF  RHODE  ISLAND 
GREENINGS,  AND  HE  HAS  KNOWN  THAT  FACT  FROM 
THE  DAY  HE  WAS  BORN,  but  he  has  hitherto  been  enabled  to 
conceal  it  from  humanity  in  all  ages  since  the  dawn  of  human  his- 
tory, "  Go  to  now,  ye  rich  men,  weep  and  howl  for  your  miseries 
that  shall  come  upon  you.  Your  riches  are  corrupted,  and  your 
garments  are  moth-eaten.  Your  gold  and  silver  is  cankered ;  and 
the  rust  of  them  shall  be  a  witness  against  you  and  shall  eat  your 


66  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

flesh  as  it  were  fire,  ye  have  heaped  treasures  together  for  the  last 
days.  Behold  the  hire  of  the  laborers  who  have  reaped  down  your 
fields,  which  is  of  you  kept  back  by  fraud,  crieth :  And  the  cries 
of  them  which  have  reaped  are  entered  into  the  ears  of  the  Lord  of 
Sabaoth.  Ye  have  lived  in  pleasure  on  the  earth,  and  been  wan- 
ton; ye  have  nourished  your  hearts  as  in  the  day  of  slaughter." 
(James  5:1-6.)  And  a  government  which  will  do,  or  suffer  one 
subject  to  do  untp  another,  what  will  result  in  taking  part  of  the 
fruit  of  the  service  of  another,  without  rendering  a  just  equivalent, 
may  well  read  and  ponder  this  passage  from  the  word  of  inspira- 
tion. 

If  Shylock  must  have  gold,  government  will  try  to  dig  it  as 
fast  as  he  can  eat  it,  but  he  must  content  himself  with  that  diet,  for 
all  else  will  be  denied  him.  He  will  soon  be  glad  to  compromise 
for  the  fruits  of  the  earth,  for  he  cannot  buy  them  with  gold ;  for 
this  people  will  not  use  it  except  in  the  arts,  and  to  erect  monu- 
ments to  the  folly  of  mankind,  and  when  this  people  take  that 
stand,  every  other  nation  will  stand  likewise,  or  it  will  fall,  for 
wealth  producers  will  desert  it,  and  establish  their  homes  in  a  land 
of  distributive  justice,  and  royalty  and  aristocracy  will  do  their  own 
washing  and  ironing,  or  it  won't  de  done. 

The  functionaries  of  a  government  which  will  obligate  its  citi- 
zenship, its  wards,  its  beneficiaries,  to  pay,  and  mortgage  their 
posterity  to  secure  the  payment,  of  billions  of  dollars  to  be  paid  in 
such  a  commodity  as  gold  in  chunks  of  a  certain  size,  stamped 
with  the  image  of  somebody,  or  some  thing,  and  a  like  obligation 
to  pay  usury  (interest)  at  some  ratio  thereon,  are  likened  only  in 
idiocy  and  imbecility  to  a  farmer  who  had  but  one  hen  and  no 
rooster,  and  who  would  buy  a  ten  thousand  dollar  farm  on  credit 
and  agree  to  pay  the  debt  and  interest  in  hen's  eggs  at  5cts.  a  dozen. 
Yea,  more  idiotic,  for  even  one  fresh  egg  as  responsive  to  human 
want  is  infinitely  more  valuable  than  all  the  gold  of  all  the  Roths- 
childs. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  67 

When  the  currency,  the  circulating  medium  for  (he  exchange  of 
all  values,  service,  and  its  product  alike,  is  always  equal  in  volume, 
and  book  or  market,  commercial  value,  there  will  be  no  shrink- 
age in  values,  but  they  will  remain  uniform.  The  citizen  who  puts 
the  surplus  of  his  earnings  into  a  home  will  always  know  that  its 
commercial  value,  like  its  economic  value,  will  remain  unchanged, 
so  that  if  perchance  he  may  find  it  to  his  private  advantage  to 
change  his  location  he  will  not  be  compelled  to  sacrifice.  One 
form  of  property  will  be  interchangeable  for  another.  And  the 
legal  tender  currency  will  be  the  evidence  of  all  forms  of  property, 
and  the  exact  parity  will  all  the, time  be  maintained;  it  will  be 
invariable  and  unvarying.  There  will  be  at  all  times  in  the  gov- 
ernment depository,  and  charged  to  cash  on  the  government  books, 
the  five  dollars  which  stands  as  the  just  representative  of  that 
day's  service  of  the  citizen ;  which  he  may  serve,  and  have,  or  he 
may  forego,  and  permit  its  cash  equivalent  to  go  into  retirement 
and  out  of  circulation.  It  is  his  to  all  intents,  for  it  stands  as 
the  just  representative  of  his  own  service;  but  if  he  will  possess 
it,  he  must  render  its  just  equivalent  in  service,  to  the  end  that 
the  economic  ledger  of  the  government  may  at  all  times  balance. 

At  the  age  of  eighteen  years,  each  citizen  will  have  standing 
against  his  expectancy  of  life's  service,  and  in  the  government 
depository  and  on  its  cash  account,  five  dollars  for  every  working 
day  for  forty  years;  in  round  numbers  sixty  thousand  dollars. 
He  may  prefer  to  retire  upon  a  home  or  farm  and  supply  all  of  his 
wants  (if  that  were  possible)  and  permit  all  of  his  proportion  of  the 
circulating  medium  (Standard  of  economic  value)  (money) 
to  go  into  retirment ;  and  the  assets  which  his  services  represents 
on  the  other  side  of  the  government  ledger  to  be  credited  off  to 
profit  and  loss,  But  he  may  serve,  if  he  pleases,  and  be  rewarded 
to  the  extent  that  he  serves,  and  abundant  opportunity  will  be 
afforded  him  to  serve,  and  that,  and  nothing  short  of  that,  will 
ever  accomplish  justice  in  popular  government. 


68  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 


CHAPTER  XL 

THE  ELECTION   OF  MONEY   AND   ITS   CANDIDATES 

IN  the  discussion  which  preceded  the  election  of  the  new  gov- 
ernment plan  no  subject  presented  anything  like  the  interest 
that  was  manifested  in  the  proposition  to  elect  "service  certifi- 
cates" to  the  office  of  Money.  The  people  were  so  accustomed  to 
the  instinct  that  gold  and  silver,  especially  gold,  had  a  life  tenure 
in  that  office. 

In  fact,  there  were  some  who  had  apparently  overlooked  the 
fact  that  Money  was  an  office,  as  well  as  an  officer;  and  that  it 
had  a  dual  existence,  and  that  as  in  the  judiciary,  a  man  might  be 
judge  by  name,  and  judge  by  office.  They  had  heard,  of  course, 
that  it  was  a  medium  of  exchange,  and  that  it  was  a  measure  (stan- 
dard) of  value ;  yet  that  it  was  an  office  which,  like  all  other  offices, 
Was  Created  by  Law,  had  never  entered  into  their  mental  cal- 
culation, and  the  discovery  of  this  important  fact  wrought  wonders 
in  their  cranial  apartments  and  entirely  disillusioned  and  dis- 
fetiched  them,  and  brought  them  to  an  immediate  consciousness  of 
the  utter  impotency  and  unfitness  of  either  gold,  or  silver,  or  both, 
for  the  proper  and  economic  performance  of  the  obvious  duties  of 
that  important  office. 

As  we  have  said,  all  offices  are  created  by  law;  and  this  par- 
ticular office  was  created  by  a  law  made  at  "a  time  whereof  the 
memory  of  man  runneth  not  to  the  contrary."  It  was  created  by 
the  custom  of  the  ancients  and  having  created  the  office,  they  pro- 
ceeded to  elect  and  install  its  incumbent ;  and  after  a  time  metals  of 
various  kinds  were  so  elected  and  installed.  The  office  and  officer 
first  acquired  the  name  money  when  metal  was  first  coined  in  the 
Roman  temple  erected  to  Juno,  and  it  was  named  money  from  the 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  69 

word  monere,  meaning  to  warn  or  to  remind.  It  was  a  system  of 
accounting,  of  bookkeeping,  before  books  were  invented ;  it  simply 
performed  the  office  of  a  receipt  in  the  transaction  of  business. 

The  functions,  the  duties  of  the  office  of  money  have  never  been 
changed;  the  office  in  all  ages,  as  now,  has  been  simply  and  solely 
a  medium  of  the  exchange  of  value  in  forms  of  property,  and  a 
measure  by  which  such  values  were  determined  for  the  purposes 
of  the  exchange.  In  this  just  conception  of  the  office  of  money,  it 
is  necessary  to  go  back  and  analyze  the  other  words,  or  better,  the 
things  with  which  the  official  functions  of  the  office  have  to  offici- 
ate ;  namely,  value  and  property.  Value,  like  money,  is  rather  a 
function,  an  office,  than  a  substance.  In  fact,  value,  in  the  last 
analysis,  is  nothing  short  of  or  different  from  ultilty.  The  value 
of  a  thing  depends  wholly  upon  its  capacity  to  supply  some  want 
or  gratify  some  desire ;  in  this  aspect,  value  cannot  be  separated 
from  the  physical  substance  which  supplies  the  want,  or  ministers 
to,  and  gratifies  the  desire.  Value  then  becomes  a  measure  of 
utility,  and  that  is  all  the  office  which  that  word  can  perform  in  the 
vocabulary  of  human  language,  or  in  any  department  of  human 
economy. 

Now,  what  is  property?  Why,  manifestly,  it  is  the  physical, 
tangible  substance  which  possesses  the  qualities  capable  of  respond- 
ing to  the  wants  of  society  individually  and  collectively ;  and  what 
are  those  wants  ?  They  are  comparatively  few,  and  are  compre- 
hended in  the  terms  food,  clothing,  shelter,  recreation,  amusement, 
education,  medical  and  surgical  attendance,  and  a  few  others 
which  might  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  one  human  hand.  The 
forms  of  property  are  innumerable,  but  they  are  found  to  be  within, 
so  far  as  utility  goes,  the  offices  in  the  supply  of  human  wants  al- 
ready specified.  What  then  is  the  source  from  which  property 
springs  or  originates?  And  by  what  process,  what  means,  is  it 
brought  into  being?  Manifestly,  by  the  service  (labor)  of  man, 
with  or  without  the  cooperation  of  the  laws  of  nature,  or  the  aid 


70  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

of  machinery,  which  itself  is  one  form  of  property  and  like  all  other 
forms,  comes  of  the  service  of  man. 

Service,  therefore,  is  found  to  lie  at  the  very  foundation  of  all 
things  which  come  within  any  conception  or  definition  of  the  word 
property ;  and  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  all  things  which  supply 
the  wants,  and  gratify  the  desires  of  the  people. 

Service  being  the  cause  of  all  things,  and  the  inseparable  con- 
comitant of  all  things,  the  conclusion  is  irresistible  that  it  should 
be  the  standard  by  which  the  value  of  all  things  is  to  be  measured 
and  determined.  Nothing  within  the  conception  of  the  human 
mind  is  so  constant,  so  unfailing,  so  uniform  in  response  to  human 
wants  as  service.  It  accompanies  his  advent  to  the  world,  it 
guards  him  through  the  perils  and  weaknesses  of  childhood,  it 
trains  his  mind,  it  nourishes  and  clothes  his  body,  it  bears  his  every 
burden,  it  ministers  to  him  in  sickness,  and  in  health,  it  prepares 
his  soul  for  eternity,  it  furnishes  his  shroud  and  consigns  his  body 
to  Mother  Earth,  and  if  service  is  not  value,  nothing  is  and  nothing 
can  be. 

The  next  thing  in  order  in  the  diagnosis  is  to  get  a  comprehen- 
sion of  the  significance  of  the  word  business,  so  let's  look  into  that. 
That  which  by  some  is  regarded  as  revelation,  and  by  all  as  sacred 
history,  reminds  us  that  business  began  in  the  second  verse  of  the 
Fourth  chapter  of  Genesis  when  Cain  started  farming,  and  his 
brother  Abel  engaged  in  stock  raising.  This  marks  the  advent  of 
property,  in  the  institutions  and  activities  of  mankind;  and  all 
forms  of  property  evolved  from  this  beginning;  and  as  we  have 
said,  the  service  of  man  applied  to  the  natural  resources  of  Mother 
Earth,  produced  them  all. 

Cain  and  Abel  were  the  body  politic,  the  sovereign  people,  and 
the  servants  of  the  people,  and  the  business  and  commercial  world. 
Exchange  then  began,  and  at  first  assumed  the  form  of  barter, 
exchanging  the  fruit,  the  product  of  service  in  one  department  for 
that  in  the  other,  measured  always  by  the  service  involved  in  its 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  71 

creation.  This  service  was  justly  measured  by  time,  the  measure 
of  the  duration  of  the  service  required,  like  the  measure  of  the  span 
of  the  life  of  the  servant. 

Later,  to  facilitate  exchange  an  arbitrary,  but  just  standard 
was  conceived  and  adopted  to  measure  the  value  of  the  product  of 
service  (property)  with  reference  to  the  length  of  service  required 
to  produce  it,  and  then  it  was  that  the  office  of  money  was  created 
by  law;  that  is,  by  custom,  which  when  once  established  and  uni- 
formly adopted  and  applied  to  the  transaction  of  men,  becomes 
law. 

Having  established  the  office  of  money,  various  material  sub- 
stances were  from  time  to  time  elected  or  appointed  to  that 
ofl5ce  and  eventually  Mr.  Gold  and  Miss  Silver  were  so  elected 
centuries  ago.  And  little  Master  Copper  and  Baby  Platinum  have 
been  permitted  to  perform  minor  functions,  but  for  the  most  part 
Mr.  Gold  has  for  centuries,  in  the  idiocy  of  men  and  governments, 
been  elected  to  tJie  office  of  jnoney  in  all  nations. 

In  this  unhappy  country  just  now.  Miss  Silver  is  suffered 
grudgingly  by  Mr.  Gold  to  ride  in  the  royal  chaise,  but  she  is 
required,  like  all  other  women,  to  be  content  and  submissive  to 
the  domination  of  the  male  bird ;  and  accorded  less  than  half  of 
her  proper  prerogative  in  the  political  and  industrial  economy. 

To  illustrate  fully  the  origin  of  the  office  of  money  and  its  orig- 
inal incumbents,  Cain  and  Abel,  the  sovereign  people,  the  law 
makers,  held  a  constitutional  convention,  and  organized  them- 
selves into  a  legislative  body  and  passed  a  verbal  resolution,  (they 
could  not  write)  to  substantially  the  following  effect : 

Whereas,  property  is  the  fruit  of  service,  and  it  is  just  for  all 
purposes  of  barter  and  exchange  that  its  value  should  be  fixed  by 
the  LENGTH  OF  SERVICE  required  in  its  creation,  and  Whereas, 
instead  of  marking  and  measuring  this  duration  of  service  by  divi- 
sions of  time,  like  years  and  its  various  component  units,  we  will 
adopt  a  different  plan,  under  a  purely  arbitrary  name,  to  perform 


72  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

the  same  office,  and  Whereas,  time  of  service  is  as  well  as  justly 
measured  in  dollars,  shillings,  dimes,  cents,  and  mills,  as  in  years, 
months,  days  and  hours. 

Therefore,  Be  it  Resolved,  that  we  make  money  in  our  own 
image,  and  that  of  Caesar  and  Washington  and  Lincoln  and  the 
American  Eagle,  as  a  stick,  a  standard  wherewith  to  measure  the 
exchange  value  of  our  service,  in  the  various  products  and  proper- 
ties which  we  create. 

Being  unable  to  write  their  laws,  creating  this  office  of  money, 
they  were  compelled  to  symbolize.  They  could  not  engrave  and 
print  them  and  be  secured  against  their  counterfeit,  and  put  their 
law  creating  the  office  upon  a  statute  book,  as  is  done  in  modern 
times,  thereby  evidencing  the  fact  that  the  bearer  of  the  incumbent 
of  the  office  had  performed  a  service  equal  to  the  denomination  of 
the  symbol. 

This  symbol,  this  incumbent,  this  officer,  personified  in  this 
chunk  of  metal,  when  taken  in  connection  with  the  law  (custom) 
which  created  the  ofl5ce,  signified  this,  and  only  this,  that  the 
bearer,  the  possessor  of  this  symbol,  has  performed  a  service  for 
the  Commonwealth  of  the  value  of  the  denomination  of  the  symbol, 
either  by  improving  the  common  highway,  or  driving  off  the  bar- 
barians from  the  land  of  Nod,  or  by  bringing  the  fruits  of  his  farm 
to  the  common  store ;  and  when  the  bearer  takes  from  the  com- 
mon store,  in  the  product  of  the  service  of  Abel,  the  corresponding 
value  in  fruit,  he  will  return  and  give  up  to  the  Commonwealth 
this  symbol. 

Commonwealth  is  not  organized  for  profit.  It  has  no  identity 
distinct  from  the  people  who  compose  it.  It  creates  by  law  the 
ofl&ce  of  money  and  the  people  elect  the  incumbent  substance; 
but  the  substance,  the  functionary,  Mr.  Gold  (Money,  monere, 
to  warn,  to  remind),  is  simply  the  bookkeeper,  the  timekeeper, 
who  records  the  product  of  the  service  of  the  people  and  stands  as 
their  certificate  of  such  service,  until  the  certificate  holder  ex- 


THE  NFAV  COLUMBIA  73 

changes  it  for  the  fruits  of  other  service ;  and  when  it  returns  to 
the  government  it  is  nothing  until  it  is  again  reissued  as  evidence 
of  another  and  wholly  distinct  service. 

Service  results  in  property ;  even  though  appHed  to  the  repair 
or  construction  of  highways,  to  the  education  of  the  youth,  or  to 
the  fighting  of  the  battles,  or  the  supply  of  common  necessities, 
and  adds  to  the  common  welfare  of  the  Commonwealth ;  and  the 
servant  is  entitled  to  credit  for  such  service  on  the  books  of  the 
Commonwealth,  but  what  is  far  better,  he  is  entitled  to  a  legal 

TENDER  CERTIFICATE,  ISSUED  BY  THE  GOVERNMENT  OF  THE  COM- 
MONWEALTH v^HiCH  HE  HAS  SERVED,  Certifying  that  he  has  per- 
formed that  service  and  fixing  its  arbitrary  value,  at  the  standard 
by  which  all  sen'ice  to  the  Commonwealth  is  measured ;  and  this, 
and  this  only  is  the  legitimate  function  of  the  office  of  money  in  the 
social  and  industrial  economies  and  institutions  of  men.  Money 
in  the  hands  of  the  sovereign,  the  law-making  power,  which  alone 
can  create  it,  is  nothing  but  a  blank,  unused  certificate,  that  is,  to 
show  to  the  world  when  issued,  that  its  possessor  has  performed  its 
just  equivalent  in  some  form  of  useful  service  to  the  Common- 
wealth. 

No  subject  of  government  is  entitled  to  the  substance  elected 
to  the  office  of  money,  which  must  emanate  from  the  sovereign, 
until  he  has  performed  a  service  to  the  government  of  the  value 
named,  but  never  contained,  in  the  substance,  whatever  it  may  be, 
which  has  been  elected  or  appointed  to  the  office  of  money,  unless 
he  has  performed  a  like  service  for  some  person,  who  had  already 
performed  a  like  service  and  obtained  the  evidence  thereof  in  like 
current  service  certificates. 

The  only  way,  therefore,  in  which  the  subject  can  get  money 
from  the  store  from  which  money  must  originate,  is  either  to 
perform  a  valued  service  for  the  Commonwelath,  or  bring  to  the 
department  source  of  the  Commonwealth  the  fruit  of  his  service 
applied  in  individual  pursuit;  and  whatever  more  of  money  he 


74  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

gets  must  come  from  serving  some  other  subject  who  has  gotten 
his  money  by  the  same  process.  Money,  then,  in  the  last  and 
final  analysis,  that  is,  money  the  functionary,  the  officer,  as  always 
distinguished  from  the  office,  is  nothing  but  government  book- 
keeping; and  if  the  volume  of  money  is  made,  and  kept  to 
correspond  at  all  times  with  the  transactions  of  government  and 
its  subjects,  as  it  must,  and  ultimately  will  be,  that  will  be  the 
end  of  the  credit  system  between  individuals,  which  has  been  the 
bane  of  men  and  nations  since  the  dawn  of  commercial  history. 

The  money,  then,  the  functionary,  the  officer,  represents  the 
credit  account  of  the  subject  at  the  store  of  the  Commonwealth; 
and  when  the  subject  goes  with  his  credit  (his  money)  to  the  store, 
and  there  secures  its  equivalent  in  the  fruit  of  other  forms  of  ser- 
vice which  have  been  brought  there,  he  gives  up,  exhausts  his  credit 
and  the  receipt  is  torn  up,  and  the  money  retired  from  circulation 
until  it  is  issued  anew,  to  stand  again  for  a  distinct  and  wholly 
original  transaction. 

This  substance,  this  functionary  which  holds  the  office  of 
money,  is  not  wealth  at  all  ;  it  is  simply  the  evidence,  issued 
and  certified  by  the  government,  that  it  represents  the  ser- 
vice OF  the  subjects  of  government  corresponding  to  the 

FACE  of  the  certificate. 

Let  us  illustrate  in  a  familiar  way  :  I  have  your  note  for 
ten  dollars ;  the  note  is  not  wealth,  it  is  not  even  money,  for  it  does 
not  perform  its  office ;  it  is  what  the  lawyers  call  the  evidence  of  a 
debt  or  obligation ;  when  you  pay  the  note,  I  have  got  money,  but 
money  is  no  more  substantial  than  the  note,  it  does  not  satisfy  a 
single  want  and  it  is  not  property  if  you  had  all  you  could  count 
in  a  million  years,  you  could  not  sustain  your  life  a  moment  by 
its  aid,  but  when  you  take  it  to  the  store  of  Commonwealth  and 
exchange  it  for  the  real  things  of  life,  then,  and  only  then  have  you 
either  property  or  wealth.  The  wealth  is  the  product  of  labor 
applied  to  something  capable  of  increased  utility  in  response  to  the 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  75 

need  of  mankind,  and  money  (substance  performing  the  ofi&ce  of 
money)  is  merely  the  evidence  that  the  fruit  of  the  service  which  it 
stands  for  is  in  the  inventory  of  common  stock  of  the  Common- 
wealth, AND  HAS  NOT  BEEN  CONSUMED. 

Now,  if  we  have  not  clearly  demonstrated  that  money  is  an 
office,  a  function  in  governmental  social  economy,  to  be  filled  by  the 
election  or  appointment  of  some  substance  competent  to  per- 
form its  function,  then  we  do  not  see  how  it  is  possible  to  demon- 
strate any  proposition  in  human  economy ;  and  we  will  defer  fur- 
ther effort,  until  we  find  that  further  demonstration  is  necessary, 
when  we  will  gladly  take  up  the  task  where  we  laid  it  down,  for 
until  that  important  truth  is  known  and  recognized,  money  will 
continue  in  the  future,  as  in  the  past,  and  at  the  present,  to  be  the 
cause  of  most,  if  not  all,  the  discord  and  injustice  which  afflict  the 
sons  of  Adam. 

Conceding,  or  assuming  then,  that  money  is  an  office,  and  that 
its  sole  function  is  to  measure  the  value  of  service,  or  its  product 
to  the  Commonwealth,  which  by  law  creates  the  office,  or  some 
member  of  the  Commonwealth  who  pays  him  in  kind  for  like  ser- 
vice of  equal  value,  let  us  consider  and  determine  a  suitable  can- 
didate for  the  office  of  money. 

This  is  the  great,  the  all-absorbing,  question  that  has  been  in  the 
minds  of  this  people  for  generations;  it  is  involved  in  the  burning 
question  of  currency  reform,  and  outside  of  those  whose  treasure 
and  whose  heart  is  invested  in  national  banking  business,  wherein 
by  the  indifference  of  God  and  the  idiocy  or  prostitution  of  gov- 
ernmental agencies  the  people,  the  government  mortgage  posteri- 
ty, unborn  generations  to  buy  gold  candidate  for  the  office  of  money, 
then  endorse  the  notes  commercial  paper  of  the  bank,  BEARING 
NO  INTEREST,  print  and  engrave  it  for  Mr.  National  Banker 
and  suffer  him  to  lend  it  at  usury  to  his  neighbor,  and  yet  he  seems 
to  think  himself  a  patriot  and  a  good  citizen,  but  it  is  simply 
because  it  is  an  easy  way  of  living,  and  the  custom  is  so  old  that  it 


76  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

really  does  not  look  quite  respectable  till  you  get  a  good  square 
look  at  it.  In  fact,  it  should  be  said  in  mitigation  of  the  present 
generation  that  it  was  born  before  he  was,  and  its  decency  is  just 
being  looked  into.  But,  outside  of  this  class,  no  one  would  sup- 
port Mr.  Gold  or  Mr.  Any-other-Metal,  for  the  office  of  money, 
any  sooner  than  they  would  support  a  professional  burglar  for  the 
oflSce  of  state  treasurer. 

There  are  almost  innumerable  objections  to  the  election  of 
metal  to  the  ofiice  of  money.  First,  it  is  a  wholly  useless  and  un- 
necessary waste  of  a  material  useful  in  the  arts  and  manufacture. 
Second,  it  costs  in  service,  better  applied  to  other  use,  nearly  as 
much  to  get  it  as  the  value  which  it  represents  after  it  is  manufac- 
tured. Third,  it  is  unwieldly  and  inconvenient,  and  no  one  will 
take  it  any  appreciable  quantity,  and  it  is  stacked  in  vaults  when 
it  could  much  better  be  applied  to  some  just  economic  use.  (If 
it  was  not  elected  money,  it  is  worth  less,  economically,  than  iron.) 

Fourth,  it  is  impossible  to  employ,  elect  and  install  it  in  the 
office  of  money,  without  giving  to  its  possessor  or  discoverer  an 
unjust  special  privilege  nearly  equal  to  the  value  which,  under 
THE  LAW,  it  represents,  and  that  robbery  is  as  much  worse  than 
any  tariff  graft,  in  its  effect  on  the  people,  as  can  be  well  imagined. 
Fifth,  it  is  wholly  and  obviously  insufficient  in  quantity  (Numbers) 
and  has  been  for  centuries,  to  perform  the  office  of  measuring  the 
value  of  service  which  is  the  source  of  all  property  and  of  all  wealth. 

The  gold  family,  by  the  idiocy  of  man,  has  been  elected  to  the 
office  of  money  in  all  the  commonwealths  of  history ;  and  all  have 
paid  the  penalty,  a  thousand  fold,  and  will  continue  to  pay  it  until 
this  nation,  wherein  the  voice  of  the  people  will  become  the  voice 
of  God  just  as  soon  as  they  can  clear  their  throats,  and  they  are 
clearing  fast. 

Finally  (for  the  present),  it  is  a  false  standard,  a  dishonest  and 
unjust  ■  measure  of  anything.  It  expands  and  contracts  in  the 
proportion  in  which  its  family  increases  or  diminishes.     The  fam- 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  77 

ily  of  Mr.  Gold  increases  more  or  less,  but  being  the  Royal  Fam- 
ily OF  ALL  NATIONS,  it  persists  in  spending  much  time  abroad. 
It  is  entertained  and  invited  to  foreign  courts,  and  whenever  Mr. 
National  Bank  wants  to  pinch  some  Wall  Street  gambler,  or  defeat 
some  Bryan,  or  take  over  the  Tennessee  Coal  and  Iron  Company, 
and  hitch  it  in  tow  to  the  Steel  Trust,  he  has  only  to  request  Mr. 
Rothschild  to  invite  Mr.  Gold  to  Europe,  and  then  the  government 
down  at  the  National  Museum  in  the  District  of  Columbia  must 
issue  bonds  and  mortgage  posterity  for  a  few  generations,  to  get 
some  more  candidate  ior  the  office  0   money. 

When,  in  the  sixties,  the  boys  down  South,  to  protect  their 
sacred  right  of  private  property  in  their  slaves,  and  insure  the 
right  to  take  such  property  into  whatever  territory  they  might 
desire  to  take  themselves,  sought  to  form  a  more  perfect  union 
and  insure  more  domestic  tranquillity  and  secure  the  blessings  of 
more  liberty  to  themselves  and  their  posterity,  by  opening  fire  on 
Fort  Sumpter,  and  when  Mr.  Lincoln  undertook  to  make  them 
go  home  and  be  decent,  the  whole  Gold  Family  went  abroad  and 
Lincoln  had  to  give  a  mortgage  on  his  people,  in  the  neighborhood 
of  three  Gold  for  one,  with  usury  added,  to  employ  the  service 
needed  to  save  the  life  of  the  nation ;  until  the  people  elected  the 
Greenback  to  the  office  of  money,  and  even  then,  that  was  only  a 
temporary  expedient ;  for,  in  the  hurry  of  the  election  of  the  Green- 
back, it  was  provided  that  he  should  be  exchanged  for  Mr.  Gold 
and  redeemed  in  Mr.  Gold,  if  he  ever  came  back;  and  he  has 
never  come  home  to  this  day,  in  any  such  quantity,  as  to  fill  the 
office,  and  this  people  will  never  get  out  of  debt,  and  no  one  ex- 
pects them  to,  and  Mr.  Gold  will  never  allow  them  to,  if  he  can  pre- 
vent it ;  and  if  he  can  measure  the  value  of  all  things,  he  can  always 
prevent  it. 

Mr.  Gold  in  his  office  of  money  has  always  measured  all  the 
service  more  or  less  with  the  same  stick.  The  service  can  never 
get  larger  than  his  yard  stick.     No  matter  how  much  the  service 


78  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

may  increase,  or  its  products  accumulate,  and  no  matter  what  its 
utility  in  the  economies  and  necessities  of  the  people,  it  is  never 
more  valuable  than  the  stick  of  Mr.  Gold. 

Whenever  the  product  of  service  outgrows  the  yard  stick  of 
]\Ir.  Gold,  he  yells  over-production;  and  the  wheels  of  industry 
must  stop  and  the  industrious  must  starve  in  the  midst  of  plenty. 
Mr.  Gold  is  a  gambler,  he  calls  it  foreign  exchange  when  he  goes 
over  to  hob-nob  with  his  royal  relatives  in  the  courts  of  Europe. 
And  then  he  has  another  vicious  habit,  and  that  is  dealing  with  the 
poor  of  foreign  countries  in  the  products  of  American  labor.  He 
calls  it  Commerce,  and  talks  about  the  balance  of  trade. 

He  measures  the  farmer's  wheat  one  day ;  it  measures  five  dol- 
lars, five  bushels.  He  measures  the  same  wheat  the  next  day,  and 
it  measures  five  bushels  all  right,  but  he  only  measures  it  two  dol- 
lars; in  short,  one  day  the  wood  pile  measures  a  cord,  but  the  next 
day  but  half  a  cord.  The  farmer  says,  this  is  the  same  wheat  you 
measured  yesterday,  and  it  involves  the  same  service  and  responds 
to  the  same  want,  but  Mr.  Gold  says  that  there  is  a  certain  law, 
which  he  calls  a  law  of  supply  and  demand,  which  controls  the  val- 
ue of  your  service  and  its  products,  and  unless  I  can  measure  it 
short  enough,  so  that  I  can  sell  it  for  profit,  I  will  not  measure  it  at 
all,  and  you  and  your  neighbors  may  die  and  starve  in  the  midst 
of  plenty.  That  Mr.  Gold  is  not  doing  business  for  his  health; 
if  he  cannot  make  a  profit  on  your  labor  sufficient  so  that  he  can 
pay  the  expenses  of  his  trip  abroad,  your  business  must  stop  and 
you  and  your  neighbors  must  starve.  That  he  understands  that 
governments  are  not  organized  or  run  for  profit,  but  that  govern- 
ment officers  are,  and  that  he,  Mr.  Gold,  occupies  the  felicitous 
office  of  Money,  the  standard  of  the  value  of  your  services  and 
those  of  your  unborn  children,  and  if  he  desires  to  do  so 
he  will  tie  you  up  in  bunches  and  sell  you  to  diaz  of 
Mexico  into  peonage. 

In  short,  he  "will  crucify  mankind  on  a  cross  of  gold,"  William 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  79 

Jennings  Bryan,  of  Lincoln,  Nebraska,  to  the  contrary  notwith- 
standing. 

He  measures  your  farm  and  home,  which  cost  the  same  service, 
and  performs  the  same  office  in  human  economy,  ten  thousand  dol- 
lars one  year  and  five  thousand  dollars  the  next.  He  explains  to 
you  that  there  is  financial  stringency,which  he  says  causes  a  shrink- 
age in  the  value  of  property ;  if  there  is  financial  stringency 

IT  IS  BECAUSE  THE  GOLD  FAMILY  DON't  PROPOGATE,  OR  BECAUSE 
THEY  HAVE  GONE  TO  EUROPE  AND  ARE  NEGLECTING  THE  DUTIES 
OF  THEIR  HIGH  OFFICE. 

When  he  gets  into  a  game  of  foreign  exchange,  the  Gold  bugs 
of  Europe  pluck  his  plumage  and  break  his  tape  line  in  two.    He 

SIMPLY  CHANGES  THE  FIGURES  ON  IT,  AND  COMES  HOME  AND 
MEASURES  YOUR  HONEST  SERVICE  AND  ITS  HONEST  PRODUCT  WITH 

HIS  DISHONEST  STICK,  and  tells  you  that  it  is  over-production, 
financial  stringency,  shrinkage  of  values,  and  when  he  stops  your 
clock  altogether,  he  yells  panic ;  that  is,  when  the  gamblers  of  Wall 
Street,  and  the  gamblers  and  money  changers  of  Europe,  the 
buyers  and  sellers  for  profit,  "who  toil  not,  neither  do  they  spin," 
have  just  simply  got  him  broke,  and  like  all  gamblers  and  all  other 
dishonest  men  in  and  out  of  office,  he  is  a  liar  from  the  foundations 
of  the  world  and  he  knows  it,  and  it  is  about  time  the  people  of  this 
nation,  who  have  the  power  to  do  it,  put  him  forever  out  of  the 
office  of  money, which  he  always  has,  and  always  will  prostitute  and 
debauch. 

If  you  will  just  stop  and  think  for  half  of  one  moment,  you  will 
see  that  one  bushel  of  wheat,  and  one  pound  of  wool,  and  one  quar- 
ter of  lamb,  is  worth  just  as  much  today,  and  no  more,  than  they 
were  the  day  that  Cain  and  Abel  started  business;  and  the  same 
is  true  of  every  staple  product  which  responds  to  the  wants 
and  ministers  to  the  desires  of  man.  And  if  Mr.  Gold  was  sunk 
in  the  middle  of  Hades,  this  people,  and  every  other  people  on  the 
face  of  God's  green  earth,  would  adjust  the  value  of  their  services 


8o  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

in  ten  days,  by  economic  statistics  taken  from  annual  census  re- 
turns ;  and  when  they  got  more  product  than  they  could  use,  they 
would  simply  do  what  any  sensible  person  does  when  he  has 
enough,  quit  business,  or  quit  eating  till  he  could  get  up  another 
appetite,  or  until  he  had  consumed  enough  to  make  it  proper  and 
prudent  to  fire  up  the  boiler  and  produce  some  more. 

Service  is  always  service ;  and  its  fruit  is  practically  the  same 
with  unfailing  beneficence :  And  the  officer  which  measures  it  one 
way  today  and  another  tomorrow,  and  deliberatley  lies  to  you  to 
deceive  you  into  submission  to,  and  reconciliation  with,  his  unjust 
juggling  and  manipulation,  is  a  dishonest  ofl&cial,  and  you  must 
discharge  him,  and  turn  him  out  of  office,  or  he  will  steal  the  nails 
out  of  your  coffin. 

The  officer  who  today  measures  your  service,  or  its  products, 
its  the  same  thing,  at  two  dollars,  and  tomorrow  measures  the 
same  service  and  the  same  product  at  one,  is  a  thief  and  scoundrel 
and  you  can't  trust  him  and  when  he  has  kept  up  his  system  of 
public  plunder  through  all  the  ages  of  human  history,  since  his 
first  installation  in  office,  you  must  not  hope  for  his  reformation. 
If  reform  were  in  his  organism,  he  would  have  long  since  mani- 
fested its  symptoms. 

We  have  searched  the  whole  realm  of  human  activity  and  inven- 
tion for  a  suitable  candidate  for  the  office  of  money  in  a  govern- 
ment OF  THE  PEOPLE,  BY  THE  PEOPLE,  AND  FOR  THE  PEOPLE,  and 
we  have  found  it.  We  have  discovered  that  service  is  the  ne  plus 
ultra  of  value  and  hence  the  only  just  standard  by  which  value  can 
be  measured. 

We  have  learned  by  authentic  census  statistics  that  the  average 
economic  value  of  service  (labor)  as  measured  by  its  products  in 
manufacture,  in  this  land  of  promised  liberty  and  equality,  is  a 
trifle  over  five  dollars  a  day. 

We  are  going  to  make  that  day  for  the  time  being  six  hours  and 
we  are  going  to  value  it  at  five  dollars,  and  we  are  going  to  pay 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  8i 

that  to  everybody,  and  we  are  going  to  put  everybody  in  a  position 
to  perform  a  service  in  which  he  or  she  will  merit  it,  if  they  are 
faithful,  and  that  is  all  we  are  going  to  pay  anybody.  One  hon- 
est SIX  HOUR  day's  service  IS  GOING  TO  BE  THE  LEGAL  STAN- 
DARD OF  VALUE  IN  George  Washington's  country  in  our  day 

AND  generation,  AND  THE  EXCHANGE  VALUE  OF  THAT  SERVICE, 
for   all  COMMERCIAL  PURPOSES,  IS    GOING   TO  BE  FIVE  DOLLARS. 

Engraved  certificates  of  service  are  going  to  be  elected  by  this 
people  to  the  office  of  Money;  and  gold  and  all  other  metals  are 
going  into  the  place  where  they  can  perform  a  useful  office,  without 
destroying  either  the  lives  or  the  happiness  of  this  people.  And  the 
sooner  the  worshippers  of  the  gold  god  Mammon  understand  that 
the  Hebrew  children  are  once  more  out  of  the  fiery  furnace,  the 
sooner  they  will  be  ready  to  go  ahead  and  help  earn  their  own  liv- 
ing and  perfect  their  title  to  life  and  its  blessing. 


CHAPTER  XLI 

THE   GENERAL   CLEARING   HOUSE 

WHEN,  under  the  new  regime,  service  certificates  be- 
come the  current  circulating  medium,  gold  and  silver 
will  go  into  disuse  as  money,  as  will  also  all  forms 
of  government  or  corporate  obligations  (deputy  money),  and  cer- 
tificates that  that  stuff  is  piled  up  in  the  museum  at  the  District  of 
Columbia,  which  in  the  idiocy  of  Juno  and  man,  has  been  called 
money. 

Its  utter  worthlessness  and  uneconomy  as  material  out  of 
which  to  maintain  a  circulating  medium  will  at  once  become  appar- 
ent. No  one  ever  conceived  that  money,  of  what  material  soever 
constructed,  was  of  itself  valuable;  but  only  that  it  represented 
value  in  other  forms  of   wealth;    just  as  under  the  enlightened 


82  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

adjustment,  the  service  certificates  do ;  and  as  all  the  coin  certifi- 
cates and  corporate  obligations  (National  Bank  notes)  and  Treas- 
ury notes  (Greenbacks)  were,  by  the  short-sightedness  of  Shylock, 
payable  in  this  same  worthless  commodity ;  there  will  be  panic  for 
a  few  moments,  but  it  will  be  confined  to  those  whose  only  personal 
assets  are  of  that  ethereal  and  effervescent  character. 

No  other  country  on  earth  can  maintain  such  a  standard  a 
moment  after  this  nation  relegates  gold  to  the  domain  of  art,  and 
any  creditor,  foreign  and  domestic,  will  be  only  too  happy  to  be 
paid  in  the  products  of  service  which  alone  sustain  life  and  alone 
possess  true  intrinsic  value. 

No  one  would  care  to  be  paid  in  a  commodity  which  was  of  no 
utility  and  of  no  market  value.  Something  which  he  himself  could 
not  use  and  which  nobody  else  would  want,  or  could  be  induced  to 
exchange  anything  of  value  for.  And  as  all  so-called  debts,  at  the 
birth  of  what  may  as  well  be  called  the  Christian  Era  (for  the  birth 
of  the  Blessed  Master  was  but  its  prophecy  and  promise)  will  be 
indifferent  as  to  its  payment,  and  would  not  carry  it  home  for  it, 
and  that  will  be  the  final  clearing,  the  universal  discharge  in  bank- 
ruptcy. 

Of  course,  the  so-called  creditor  class  will  repine  and  regret 
that  they  did  not  have  their  obligations  payable  in  some  commodity 
which  would  sustain  life,  and  afford  ease  and  comfort,  so  that  they 
might  still  live  by  the  sweat  and  toil  of  their  fellow  men  in  the  future, 
as  in  the  past ;  but  they  will  be  no  different,  no  worse,  and  no  more 
disappointed  than  the  pursuers  of  other  phantoms  and  mirages 
which  have  no  existence  except  in  the  delusion  of  humanity. 

But  they  will  have  their  expectancy.  They  are  still  sovereigns 
as  they  are  servants;  they  will  enjoy  what  a  just  government  re- 
quires them  to  accord  to  all  men  and  women,  "  Equal  suffrage, 
equal  rights  and  responsibilities,  and  equal  opportunities,"  which 
has  been  the  false  and  delusive  promise  always  held  before  the  eyes 
of  this  people  since  the  organization  of  this  government. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  83 


CHAPTER   XLII 

THE   EFFECT  UPON  THE   INDIVIDUAL  ENERGY 
AND   INITIATIVE 

THE  first  and  most  inspiring  manifestation  will  be  the  uni- 
versal spontaneous  bloom  of  perennial  and  ever  expand- 
ing patriotism. 
Every  child  will  feel  a  just  pride  in  the  fact  that  this  is  his,  or 
her  country;   that  he  is  a  stockholder  in  this  grand  corporation, 
with  equal  voice  and  vote,  and  that  there  are  no  longer  any  bonds, 
nor  preferred  stocks ;  that  he  and  his  children,  and  his  children's 
children  own  and  will  always  own,  an  equal  interest,  with  every 
other  child  of  Columbia,  in  every  spike,  and  tie,  palace,  and  freight 
car,  and  the  locomotive   that  draws  it  into  every  vale,  over  every 
plain  and  mountain  of  this  broad  and  happy  land,  every  inch  of 
which  will  some  day  blossom  like  the  Eden  of  our  fore-parents. 
"  I  love  every  inch  of  her  prairie  land,  each  stone  in  her  mountain 
side. 
I  love  every  drop  of  her  water  pure,  that  flows  in  her  rivers  wide. 
I  love  every  tree,  every  blade  of  grass  within  Columbia's  gates, 
For  the  Queen  of  the  Earth  is  the  land  of  my  birth,  my  Re- 
United  States." 
It  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  what  might  be  termed  the 
upper  crust,  the  cream  of  society,  to  say  nothing  of  the  common 
people,  to  feel  that  this  is  "  My  Country,  'tis  of  thee,  sweet  land 
of  liberty"  when  all  the  representatives  of  all  sections  of  all  states 
are  unable  to  effect  an  appropriation  in  the  lower  "People's  house," 
House  of  Congress,  of  fifty  cents  to  save  some  soldier's  widow  from 
the  poor  house,  without  the  consent  and  approval  of  one  repre- 
sentative, one  large  gun,  from  one  district  in  the  state  of  Illinois. 
"That  all  men  are  created  equal,  and  endowed  by  their  Creator 


84  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

with  certain  inalienable  rights  among  which  are  life,  liberty  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness"  when  a  small  element  of  society  is  rolling  and 
lolling  in  luxury  on  the  spoils  of  this  fair  land,  while  their  automo- 
biles are  passing  honest,  earnest  fathers  praying  for  the  right  to 
work  and  live,  and  hungry  wives  and  children  are  dying  for  the 
want  of  care;  and  the  middle  classes,  between  the  extremes  of 
wealth  and  poverty,  are  contending  one  with  another  in  what  is 
justly  termed  a  veritable  organized  antagonism ;  where  business 
if  it  can  be  justly  so  dignified,  is  little  short  of  war  to  the  knife,  with 
the  knife  to  the  hilt. 

That  when  we  need  a  measure  of  prime  importance  to  the 
people  in  nation,  state  or  municipality,  we  must  begin  before  the 
primaries  to  find  a  candidate  who  will  stand  for  it,  then  struggle 
night  and  day  for  weeks  or  months  to  secure  his  nomination  and 
election,  and  then  stand  at  all  times  between  him  and  a  corrupt  and 
prostituted  lobby. 

That  "  he  (Washington)  threw  back  the  fetters,  he  headed  the 
strife,  till  man's  charter  was  fairly  restored.  Then  he  prayed  for 
the  moment  when  liberty  and  life  should  no  longer  be  pressed  by 
the  sword,"  when  the  energies  of  government  are  exerted,  her 
treasury  depleted,  and  her  posterity  encumbered,  if  not  her  agen- 
cies prostituted,  to  construct  a  ship  canal  to  float  the  engine  of  war, 
and  exploit  the  heathen  of  the  Orient  in  the  name  of  a  Commerce, 
little  short  of  rapine. 

That  we  have  formed  a  perfect  union,  established  justice, 
insured  domestic  tranquillity,  promoted  the  general  welfare,  and 
secured  the  blessings  of  liberty  to  ourselves  and  our  posterity" 
when  since  the  date  of  the  adoption  of  our  corporate  charter,  (our 
Constitution  of  1787)  we  have,  in  the  turmoil  of  civil  war  to  destroy 
that  Union,  and  the  political  warfare  incident  to  the  idiotic  main- 
tenance of  fifty  governments,  more  or  less,  with  their  endless  ret- 
inue of  parasites  in  the  name  of  a  government  for  one  people,  with 
one  country,  one  flag,  and  one  purpose,  and  in  the  greater  idiocy  of 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  85 

partisan  politics,  wasted  sutlQcient  energy  and  money,  (if  money 
there  is)  to  pave  this  land  with  asphalt,  and  plant  its  barren  wastes 
with  flowers,  to  say  nothing  of  the  blood  and  tears  suflacient  for  its 
irrigation. 

The  next  noticeable  but  no  less  beneficent  manifestation  of 
the  new  regime  will  be  the  immediate  elimination  of  the  race 
•question  in  all  its  aspects,  that  ever  present  problem,  so  menacing 
to  the  peace  of  this  nation.  There  can  in  the  nature  of  things  be  no 
classes  in  a  society  where  all  are  absolutely  free.  When  the  legis- 
lative powers  are  vested  in  a  board  of  two  governors  from  each 
state,  and  no  local  or  special  legislation  is  tolerated,  and  one  people, 
the  colored  man,  if  you  please,  is  at  liberty  to  go  where  fancy  leads 
him,  there  is  no  menace  of  colored  voters  by  force  of  superior  num- 
ber controlling  the  white  man's  government  and  legislating  in  the 
interest  of  his  class,  or  his  color,  and  that  removes  the  last  vestige 
of  the  disturbing,  perturbing,  bone  of  contention  which  has  always 
strained  and  once  nearly  severed  the  bonds  of  this  union. 

There  can  be  no  competition  in  the  labor  market,  or  any  other 
market,  and  that  is  the  prime  cause  at  the  bottom  of  what  may  be 
called  the  Yellow  Peril.  If  the  emigrant  from  China,  or  the  op- 
pressed of  other  lands  wants  to  pick  up  his  wife  and  children,  and 
come  among  us  with  an  honest  heart  and  purpose,  and  adopt  our 
country  as  his  home  and  help  us  with  his  strong  and  steady  hand 
to  make  it  a  fit  habitation  for  husband,  wife  and  children,  as  God 
designed  that  all  lands  should  be ;  to  make  the  desert  places  blos- 
som like  the  rose  and  respond  to  the  wants  of  men,  he  will  be  wel- 
come. He  wont  want  gold,  for  when  we  have  demonetized  it,  all 
other  nations  will  be  conpelled  to  do  likewise. 

He  will  be  a  blessing,  for  he  will  perform  a  valued  service  in  the 
future  as  in  the  past.  He  has  been  trained  and  accustomed  and 
inured  by  experience  and  adaptation  to  a  work  that  many  of  our 
people  are  both  unwilling  and  unable  to  perform.  He  will  go 
where  the  steam  shovel  and  the  traction  ditcher  cannot  work,  and 


86  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

but  for  the  ever  present  struggle  for  the  right,  and  opportunity  to 
labor,  he  would  in  all  the  past,  as  in  all  the  future,  have  been 
doubly  welcome.  He  always  was  and  always  will  be,  willing  and 
jealous  to  do  his  full  share ;  and  when  once  for  all.  Commonwealth 
in  fact,  not  less  than  name,  is  accomplished,  the  race  problem  will 
forever  evaporate. 

We  must  not  leave  this  subject  until  we  remember  and  empha- 
size that  this  is  God's  land,  that  ere  the  white  man  set  his  foot 
upon  its  fertile  soil,  God  had  planted  upon  it  a  race  of  human  be- 
ings in  the  execution  of  his  Divine  will.  That  by  the  treachery, 
PERFIDY  AND  CRUELTY  of  the  white  man  that  race  is  nearly  extinct 
and  removed  from  the  face  of  nature,  and  the  last  remnant  is  now 
aboutjo  be  pushed  into  the  Pacific.  That  but  for  the  white  man's 
statute  of  limitations,  the  red  brother  might  yet  repossess  himself 
of  this  fair  land  by  laws  of  the  white  man's  enactment.  It  is  by  the 
mercy  only  of  the  Great  Spirit  of  the  Native  i\mericans  that  the 
white  man  is  still  permitted  to  inhabit  this  fair  land ;  and  these 
reflections  should  soften  the  heart  of  the  white  man  toward  the 
expiring  remnant  of  God's  native  American,  and  cause  him  to 
welcome  the  oppressed  of  all  lands  who  come  for  succor  and  sus- 
tenance to  this  cradle  of  human  liberty. 

Finally,  under  this  head,  all  this  absurd  idiocy  of  political  party 
system,  and  machinery,  would  fall  apart ;  for  it  would  have  nothing 
to  induce  the  people  to  perpetuate  a  controversy.  The  people  will 
have  passed  by  and  over  all  the  so-called  political  issues,  the  stuff 
called  policy  put  into  party  platforms,  for  the  mere  temporary 
purpose  of  causing  a  division  of  the  people,  while  they  install  from 
the  system  and  horde  of  political  parasites  the  particular  crew 
that  for  a  period  are  to  levy  tribute  on  the  trusts  (the  Captains  of 
Industry)  and  hold  the  agencies  of  protective  government  away 
from  the  people,  while  they  reimburse  themselves  for  their  cam- 
paign contributions. 

The  real  business  of  government  will  be  in  the  civil  semce,  and 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  87 

in  the  heads  of  the  various  departments,  and  the  Governors  will 
have  very  little  functiong  after  once  the  plant  is  equipped  and  in 
operation. 

There  will  be  local  self-government,  executive,  administrative, 
and  judicial,  in  every  township  and  county,  and  the  laws  will  be  so 
simple,  and  the  knowledge  of  them  so  easily  attained,  and  no  cause 
for  social  injustice,  that  the  nation  will  go  forward  to  lasting  inter- 
nal peace  and  tranquillity  and  superabundant  social  and  indi- 
vidual prosperity;  then,  indeed,  will  the  dream  of  the  founders  of 
popular  government  come  true. 


CHAPTER  XLIII 

THE   WAY   IT   CAME   ABOUT 

THE  inquiry  naturally  arises.  How  could  it  be,  that  within 
five  years  after  the  triumphant  election  and  installation 
of  that  illustrious  trio,  Taft,  Tariff  and  Trusts,  there 
could  be  such  a  popular  upheaval,  as  that  there  could  be  a 
unanimous  vote  in  favor  of  establishing  the  new  Columbia  —  this 
radical  change  in  governmental  policy,  plant  and  machinery? 

While  it  may  not  be  possible  in  one  brief  chapter,  to  enumerate 
all  of  the  causes  which  led  to  this  phenomonal  popular  restoration 
to  political  and  industrial  sanity,  we  may  point  to  a  few  of  the  lead- 
ing causes,  and  the  reader  may  then  by  a  natural  process  of  philo- 
sophic deduction,  readily  discern  those  of  which  we  omit  specific 
mention. 

Probably  the  most  potent  reason  was  that  the  nation,  most  of 
the  states,  all  of  the  municipalities,  and  ninety  percent  of  the  peo- 
ple, were  totally  and  irretrievably  bankrupt.  Gold  having  been 
the  recognized  legal  standard  of  value,  the  only  recognized  candi- 
date for  the  office  of  money,  and  hence  the  only  commodity  or  sub- 


88  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

stance  of  ultimate  payment  of  this  mountain  of  debt;  and  its 
annual  increase  in  the  United  States  in  1908  having  been  but 
eighty  million  dollars,  twenty-one  million  dollars  less  than  the 
economic  value  of  the  fruit  crop  of  one  state  of  the  union,  it  be- 
came at  once  apparent,  that  it  was  utterly  impossible  for  this  peo- 
ple, this  nation,  these  states,  and  these  municipalities  groaning 
under  this  burden  of  debt  to  ever  hope  to  pay  its  debts  in  gold  or 
under  the  gold  standard  policy  which  Shylock  had  fastened  upon 
this  oppressed  people. 

That  no  scheme  could  be  devised  by  tariff  revision  or  otherwise, 
by  state,  nation,  or  individuals  by  which  this  enormous  debt  could 
ever  be  paid  in  gold.  That  the  gold  was  not  either  in  sight,  or  in 
prospect ;  that  the  gold  output  would  not  pay  the  interest  on  the 
debt,  to  say  nothing  of  the  principal ;  and  that  if  all  the  property 
in  the  nation  were  sold  at  auction,  it  would  not  bring  gold  enough 
to  pay  the  debt,  for  the  gold  was  not  in  existence  and  in  all  proba- 
bility never  would  be. 

That  the  ever-increasing  burden  of  taxation  had  become  intol- 
erable ;  and  that  the  people  could  not  get  the  means  wherewith  to 
pay  such  taxes.  That  by  reason  of  the  absence  of  gold  money, 
which  was  the  legal  standard  by  which  the  value  of  all  things  was 
required  to  be  measured.  That  the  value  of  all  forms  of  productive 
property  had  shrunk  and  shrivelled  until  there  was  no  stability  in 
the  commercial  value  of  such  property.  That  no  man  could 
invest  his  money,  if  he  had  it,  with  any  assurance  that  he  would 
ever  be  able  to  get  it  again.  If  he  loaned  it,  he  could  have  no 
assurance  that  the  borrower  could  ever  pay  the  interest  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  principal. 

That  production  and  distribution  had  come  into  the  control 
of  great  industrial  combinations,  called  trusts,  because  com- 
binations were  necessary  to  prevent  ruin  by  competition  which 
destroyed  profits,  so  that  the  small  merchants,  dealers,  and  man- 
ufacturers, and  small  producers  of  all  kinds  could  not  operate  in 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  89 

competition  with  these  combinations,  which  could,  by  reason  of 
the  natural  economy  of  large  scale  operations,  undersell  them, 
and  they  were  forced  into  bankruptcy.  That  enormous  quan- 
tities of  government  revenue,  national  and  state,  were  being  ex- 
pended by  the  governing  powers,  in  a  fruitless  eflfort  to  stay  and 
stem  the  tide  of  industrial  combinations;  an  effort  by  man  made 
laws  to  countervale  and  intercept  and  counteract  the  natural  law 
of  social  and  industrial  economy. 

That  enforced  idleness,  resulting  from  suspension  of  individual 
enterprise,  effected  to  destroy  the  home  market  for  all  the  pro- 
ducts, because  the  people  could  not  get  the  means  with  which  to 
purchase  such  product ;  and  it  was  discovered  that  in  this  hopeless 
condition  of  the  home  market,  the  combinations  (trusts)  which 
controlled  American  manufacture,  could  no  longer  compete  with 
foreign  nations  in  exploiting  the  heathen  of  the  Orient.  In  short, 
that  the  business  of  money  making  vl^as  nearly  at  an  end. 

That  even  a  trust,  unless  it  had  a  complete  monopoly 
COULD  NOT  MAKE  PROFITS,  and  the  monopolistic  combinations,  by 
reason  of  the  poverty  of  the  consuming  classes,  could  readily 
see  the  end  of  money  making,  even  with  the  aid  of  a  complete 
monopoly. 

The  second,  and  no  less  potent,  influence  in  this  social  and  in- 
dustrial evolution,  came  of  the  consciousness  of  what  is  known  as 
the  System,  the  combinations  which  controlled  not  only  the  pro- 
duction and  distribution  of  the  nation,  but  the  politicians  in  office 
who,  for  them  and  in  their  interest,  manipulated  the  governmental 
machinery;  that  the  government  plant  was  wholly  out  of  date  and 
eternally  un-economic,  and  must  itself  be  systematized  upon  the 
same  plan  and  along  the  same  economic  lines  that  they  had  al- 
ready systematized  production  and  transportation. 

These  industrial  economists  (trusts)  understood  the  fact  that 
when  a  plant,  a  system,  was  useless,  illy  adapted,  and  out  of  date, 
that  it  must  be  relegated  to  the  junk  heap,  and  that  all  unnecessary 


90  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

expenses  must  be  eliminated.  They  discovered  that  we  were  strug- 
gling with  fifty  separate  conflicting  governmental  engines,  with  one 
hundred  legislative  bodies,  and  innumerable  administrative  boards 
empowered  by  conflicting  and  mercenary  political  parasites,  pos- 
sessing power  to  make  them  (in  their  interstate  business  relations) 
maintain  enormous  lobbies,  and  disburse  enormous  corruption 
funds,  to  prevent  these  political  parasites  from  destroying  their 
businsss. 

That  to  bear  this  enormous  and  wholly  unnecessary  expense 
they  had  to  exact  exorbitant  prices  and  rates  from  a  struggling  and 
oppressed  people,  and  had   to  issue  watered  stocks  to  dummy 

STOCKHOLDERS,  and  CARRY  THE  NAMES  OF  THESE  DUMMY  STOCK- 
HOLDERS ON  THEIR  TRUST  (holding  Corporate  books)  to  cover  these 
political  funds,  filched  from  them  by  the  political  parasites,  great 
and  small,  who  every  year  and  every  minute,  and  especially  every 
four  years,  depleted  their  treasury  for  so-called  campaign  contri- 
butions, under  threat  of  destruction  to  their  vast  business  interests 
or  enterprises,  if  the  people,  whom  they  were  compelled  by  these 
pirates  to  exploit,  should  get  control  of  the  reins  of  some  of  this 
mongrel,  conglomerate  and  indefensible  so-called  government. 
In  short,  the  business  men  (we  mean  the  men  whose  brains 

SYSTEMATIZED  THE  GREAT  ECONOMIC,  INDUSTRIAL  MANUFACTUR- 
ING AND    TRANSPORTATION    ENTERPRISES    OF    THIS   NATION),   the 

men  who  saw  and  eliminated  the  uneconomies  and  idiocies  of  com- 
petition in  these  industries,  saw  the  necessity  of  combination  in 
distribution  and  consumption,  and  in  governmental  enterprise,  and 
they  refused  longer  to  be  held  up  by  these  political  parasites.  That 
had  some  interests  in  common  with  the  toilers  who  operated  their 
enterprises,  but  they  had  none  with  the  pohticians  who  were  exploit- 
ing, both  them  and  their  toilers,  and  they  determined  to  eliminate 
them  from  industrial  and  governmental  economy,  and  relegate 
them  to  the  political  junk  heap  along  with  the  old  and  out  of  date 
enginery,  by  which  they  had  always  been  enabled  to  rob  them  and 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  91 

maintain  a  political  oligarchy,  as  dangerous  to  popular  government 
as  any  aristorcacy  on  the  face  of  God's  footstool. 

And  what  is  still  more  important,  if  possible,  these  same  busi- 
ness men  (these  captains  of  American  industry  and  enter- 
prise) whatever  may  be  the  inconsiderate  judgment  of  mankind, 
who  only  judge  from  appearances,  and  are  ignorant  of  all  their 
motives,  and  much  of  the  facts  in  their  environment,  have  most,  if 
not  all  of  them,  at  all  times  been  striving  to  improve  the  world  and 
conserve  the  economies  of  the  enterprises  in  which  their  high  am- 
bitions were  moving  them.  They  were  compelled  to  make  large 
profits  to  meet  the  enormous  drains  upon  their  resources,  from  the 
causes  of  which  we  have  already  made  mention,  and  to  protect  the 
economies  in  industrial  combination  which  they  had  accomplished. 
Their  ambition  was  in  the  ultimate  accomplishment  of  the  economies 
in  production  and  transportation,  as  we  have  said  in  the  preceding 
chapters  of  this  work,  and  personal  gain  to  them  was  a  mere 
incident  to  the  realization  of  their  dream  of  systematiz- 
ing THESE  enterprises. 

These  men  just  simply  determined  to  be  no  longer  strung  by 
these  political  bosses,  and  declared  their  independence,  and  refused 
to  be  longer  exploited  by  them;  and  of  necessity,  the  politics, 
(Business)  became,  from  that  moment,  wholly  unprofitable. 

When  the  so-called  leaders  (the  leaches  of  the  dominant  IM- 
POLITIC PARTIES),  discovered  that  the  System  was  no  longer 
going  to  bleed,  they  could  no  longer  maintain  their  following  and 
the  honest  element,  the  rank  and  file  (especially  the  file),  at  once 
discovered  that  these  parasites  had  been  exploiting  both  them  and 
their  employers,  and  they  paid  no  further  attention  to  them,  and 
joined  the  "American  Party"  and  voted  to  a  man  for  the 
establishment  of  an  efficient,  honest,  and  up-to-date 
popular  home  rule  government. 


92  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 


CHAPTER    XLIV 

FAULT   OF   THE   SYSTEM,   NOT   OF   THE   PEOPLE 

N"  O  man,  or  class  of  men  living  at  the  birth  of  the  new 
nation  will  be  at  fault;  we  simply  sent  them  on  this 
pleasure  excursion  to  get  the  family  out  of  the  way, 
while  the  servants  cleaned  house  and  shifted  the  furniture  and 
got  the  dirt  out  of  the  machinery. 

Every  member  of  the  family  was  well  aware  that  there  was 
something  radically  wrong ;  that  a  governmental  plant  and  machin- 
ery which  had  been  erected  and  installed  for  a  century  and  a  quar- 
ter was  out  of  date,  and  un-economic,  and  must  be  built  over  in 
some  manner  and  modernized,  but  the  influential  members  of  the 
family  did  not  understand,  and  could  not  agree  as  to  how  to  accom- 
plish the  desired  reconstruction,  while  the  servants,  or  most  of 
them,  knew  all  the  time  that  it  must  be  built  over  from  the  founda- 
tion, and  the  machinery  must  be  of  an  entirely  new  pattern. 

They  had  known  for  years,  yea,  for  centuries,  that  the  lubri- 
cant (the  gold  and  silver  money),  while  the  material  was  excellent 
in  the  arts,  was  all  the  time  gumming  up  the  machinery  and  bear- 
ings, that  it  got  into  the  cogs,  that  it  caused  all  the  journals  to  get 
hot  and  burn  out,  that  it  was  impossible  to  keep  all  of  the  machin- 
ery going  any  of  the  time ;  that  more  than  half  of  it  was  out  of  com- 
mission more  than  half  of  the  time,  and  that  about  once  in  ten 
years  the  whole  thing  was  clogged  up  and  the  fires  went  out  in  the 
furnace,  and  the  cellar  was  full  of  water,  and  that  permanent  re- 
pair was  impossible. 

They  understood,  because  they  built  the  machinery,  and  ran  it, 
whenever  it  could  be  made  to  run,  that  this  lubricant  was  insuffi- 
cient in  quantity  to  maintain  the  parity  of  value,  which  was  indis- 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  93 

pensible  to  that  equilibrium  which  would  enable  the  plant  to  be 
constant  and  unvarying  in  its  revo-  and  g7;o-lutions. 

It  was  intimated  during  the  discussion  which  preceded  the  vote 
on  the  question  of  the  New  Columbia  that  individual  initiative  and 
ambition  were  going  to  be  endangered,  that  man  was  going  to  lose 
his  identity  and  individuality,  his  personal  ambition  for  achieve- 
ment, in  this  seeming  ocean  of  Commonwealth.  That  if  a  man 
could  not  see  the  possibility  of  being  President  of  the  United  States, 
or  of  owning  a  system  of  trunk  line  railroad,  with  their  vast  and 
varied  equipment,  or  of  monopolizing  and  trustifying  an  impor- 
tant economic  industry,  that  individual  man  was  going  back  to  the 
chrysalis  state  of  his  evolution. 

That  the  thing  to  be  done  was  to  accomplish  (the  limit  of 
wealth)  to  use  the  old  system,  the  old  steam  roller  and  crusher  of 
centurion  pattern,  to  pound  combinations  back  into  competition. 
That  competition  was  the  life,  not  the  death  of  society ;  that  if  ser- 
vice was  the  standard  of  value,  and  it  was  measured  by  uniformity 
in  time,  and  rewarded  to  all  servants  alike,  and  in  the  same  pro- 
portion, that  there  could  and  would  be  no  progression. 

They  seemed  for  the  moment  to  have  forgotten  that  in  corporate 
commonwealth,  where  there  is  no  preferred  stock,  that  one  stock- 
holder has  the  same  interest  in  the  entire  enterprise  that  every 
stockholder  has.  That  all  stockholders  are  both  servants  and 
proprietors ;  they  own  the  whole  plant ;  and  they  select  all  of  the 
corporate  agencies,  with  equal  voice  and  vote,  and  they  take 
a  just  and  equal  pride  and  satisfaction  in  all  of  its  successes  and 
achievements,  in  all  its  development,  and  in  its  sure  and  ultimate 
perfection. 

Again,  there  is  another  highly  important  truth  in  human  nature 
and  human  experience,  which  they  also  overlook;  and  it  is,  that 
the  ambition  of  man  looks  to  results  not  to  means;  and  wealth 
was  never  anything  but  a  means.  Wealth  is  not  only  a  means, 
but  it  is  a  result  of  the  manifestation  of  an  ambition,  a  concomitant 


94  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

of  the  persistent,  intelligent  pursuit  of  a  living,  consuming,  over- 
mastering ambition  to  accomplish  a  result  which  is  the  end,  and 
consummation  of  that  ambition. 

Wealth  comes  often  unbidden,  and  wholly  unexpected,  and 
sometimes  even  undesired,  as  an  incident  to  the  propelling  force 
of  a  consuming  ambition.  A  Rockefeller  sees  a  valuable  natural 
product,  capable  of  bringing  light  to  the  children  of  men,  running 
down  the  stream  of  Oil  Creek  in  the  county  of  Venango,  in  the 
State  of  Pennsylvania.  He  sees  that  by  the  folly  of  men  in  giving 
vent  to  this  store  of  natural  light,  it  goes  spontaneously  to  waste 
and  destruction,  for  the  reason  that  with  present  and  known  facil- 
ities, it  cannot  be  utilized  and  placed  within  reach  of  the  people. 

He  sees  the  manufacturers  of  this  product  in  a  war  of  competi- 
tion for  market  which  renders  it  impossible  to  secure  the  means 
with  which  to  save  the  product  and  expand  the  business,  so  that 
nothing  economic  need  be  wasted.  He  is  seized  with  a  consum- 
ing ambition  to  so  systematize  the  industry  as  to  conserve  the  gen- 
eral economy,  and  he  builded  the  much  advertised  and  little 
understood  (Standard  Oil  Trust.) 

Wealth  in  the  process,  as  well  as  system,  was  indispensible,  to 
the  dream  of  his  over-mastering  ambition ;  to  secure  this  wealth, 
a  system  of  profit  in  the  industry  was  indispensible,  the  system  was 
established,  the  avalanche  of  wealth  was  loosened,  and  Mr.  Rocke- 
feller is  buried  under  it,  and  they  say  Wade  H.  Ellis  is  trying  to 
dig  him  out,  and  resuscitate  him. 

Of  course,  there  is  but  one  remedy  for  the  evil  of  competition, 
and  that  is  combination.  Combination  is  monopoly,  and  if  anyone 
is  left  outside  the  combination,  monopoly  becomes  unlawful, 
according  to  the  science  of  all  unscientific  law  and  lawyers.  We 
speak  advisedly,  and  from  a  source  of  personal  experience,  when 
we  affirm  that  law,  as  popularly  understood  at  the  birth  of  this 
modern  and  only  Christian  Era,  was  builded  upon  the  manifest 
error  that  man  had  a  natural  right  to  have  and  hold  that  for  which 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  95 

he  had  no  earthly  use,  while  his  fellow  mortals  were  perishing  in 
regiments,  and  in  single  file,  for  the  want  of  that  very  substance ; 
and  this  is  what  has  so  often  been  termed  by  so-called  states- 
men, as  the  SACRED  right  of  private  property. 

We  speak  of  this  only  as  declaratory,  or  explanatory,  of  the 
unsciences  of  law  and  lawyers.  They  do  not  seem  to  be  able  to 
comprehend  and  appreciate  the  obvious  truth,  that  combination 
is  the  legitimate  child  of  competition,  and  that  competition  is  both 
unjust  and  un-economic,  andcannot  be  lawful  after  the  law  and  the 
lawyers  catch  up  with  the  procession  in  the  evolution  of  social  and 
political  progression,  toward  that  ultimate  perfection,  which  is  the 
eternal  design  of  the  Creator,  and  the  ultimate  haven  of  the  created. 

They  would  pass  a  law  that  a  child  should  reinhabit  its  moth- 
er's womb,  that  a  butterfly  should  reanimate  its  mater  caterpil- 
lar, that  the  locomotive  should  become  a  yoke  of  brindle  steers,  and 
if  there  was  a  man  in  the  black  house  at  Washington  so  devoid  of 
human  instinct  as  that  he  can  build  Panama  Canals  and  shed  the 
blood  of  his  fellow  beasts  in  the  jungles  of  Africa,  while  naked, 
barefooted  children  are  standing  on  the  frosty  pavement  and  dying 
of  starvation,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  he  would  attempt  to  execute 
them,  and  junket  lawyers  all  over  the  country  and  board  them  at 
palatial  hotels,  and  spend  millions  of  the  people's  money  in  an 
attempt  to  accomplish  it. 

Combination  is  a  universal  law  of  matter  and  spirit.  It  is  in 
virtue  of  this  immutable  law  that  material  worlds  were  formed 
from  Nebula.  Combination  is  the  eternal  purpose,  the  ultimate 
design,  but  all  humanity  is  going  to  be  within  its  protection,  and  the 
beneficiaries  of  its  economy. . 

These  master  minds  are  those  which  in  God's  providence,  and 
by  his  nurture,  were  made  to  build  these  colossal  combinations, 
as  an  admonition,  an  earnest,  of  the  final  combine,  which  is  to 
usher  in  the  final  victory  of  peace  on  earth. 

In  the  divine  economy  and  purpose,  of  whose  wisdom  we  must 


96  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

not,  cannot  doubt,  pain  is  the  eternal,  ever  present  concomitant, 
the  midwife  of  all  birth  in  human  life,  and  human  economy ;  and 
the  birth  of  wisdom,  as  applied  to  all  the  details  of  human  experi- 
ence, is  no  exception  to  the  omnipotent,  universal  plan. 

That  God's  servants  employed  to  perform  the  surgery  which 
transforms  competition  into  combination,  both  in  detail  and  in 
general,  may  not  have  administered  the  anaesthetic  of  humanity 
and  sympathy  in  the  travail,  may,  by  some  theologians,  be  attri- 
buted to  some  suggestion  of  a  spirit  of  evil  which  their  deluded 
imagination  may  have  personified,  or  deified,  and  which,  or  who, 
through  the  impeachment  of  God's  wisdom,  they  assume  to  be  at 
war  with  His  purposes. 

They  are  unable  to  see  that  good  and  evil  are  the  same  thing  in 
different  degrees,  although  they  cannot  see  where  the  one  begins 
and  the  other  terminates.  They  seem  to  think  that  it  is  possi- 
ble to  know  the  one,  without  knowing  the  other ;  that  one  can  feel 
and  appreciate  the  warmth  who  has  never  felt  the  chill.  They 
have  read  "Behold,  the  man  has  become  as  one  of  us;  knowing 
good  and  evil, "  but  they  have  yet  to  learn  that  good  and  evil  are  but 
one ;  that  their  varying  shades  converge,  and  they  must  needs  taste 
the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  their  knowledge,  and  must  not  take  their 
theories  from  others,  whose  experience  may  be  as  limited  as  theirs. 

But  to  return  to  the  subject,  the  point  of  digression,  for  which 
we  seek  pardon,  ambition,  in  the  last  analysis,  looks  only  to  results. 
You  provide  a  Rockefeller  with  means  to  accomplish  the  end  of  his 
ambition,  to  create  and  maintain  a  system  which  will  utilize  the 
natural  elements  and  take  its  expanding  product  to  light  the  dark 
places  of  the  earth ;  and  give  him  the  servants  and  appliances  to 
work  this  consummation, and  he  will  do  it  without  money  and  with- 
out price.  His  ambition  is  satisfied  to  see  the  work  of  his  concep- 
tion carried  to  this  ultimate  purpose,  and  individual  wealth  which 
came  to  him  as  its  concomitant,  its  incident,  is  the  very  least  of  the 
elements  of  his  gratification.     He  is  trying  to  do  good,  both  in  the 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  97 

process,  and  now  with  the  wealth  which  the  process  has  thrust 
upon  him.  We  may  differ  with  him  as  to  the  wisdom  or  efficiency 
of  the  means  which  he  may  choose  to  make  his  wealth  accomplish 
good,  but  of  that  he  must  judge. 

He  started  out  upon  a  divine  commission  to  destroy  competi- 
tion, to  the  end  that  combination  might  be  born  as  to  the  partic- 
ular industry  to  which  nature  and  environment  caused  him  to  apply 
his  ambition,  and  what  we  have  already  said  of  the  pains  of  travail 
apply  in  detail,  as  well  as  in  general. 

What  Mr.  Rockefeller  is  in  Standard  Oil,  so  is  Mr.  Harriman 
and  Mr.  Hill  in  Railroads,  and  Mr.  Frick  and  Mr.  Gary  in  Steel 
and  Mr.  Baer  in  Coal  Mining.  Each  saw  the  effects  of  competi- 
tion in  their  particular  department,  and  started  out  to  destroy,  or 
rather  cure,  and  supplant  it  with  economic  combination  prepara- 
tory to  a  Christian  era ;  but  we  doubt  whether  any  of  these  gentle- 
men were  ever,  or  are  even  now,  aware  of  their  divine  commission. 
"God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way  his  wonders  to  perform." 
Though  from  alleged  utterances  of  Mr.  Rockefeller  in  recent  years, 
stung  by  the  public  criticism  to  which  he  has  been  so  often  sub- 
jected, he  has  given  voice  to  the  same  eternal  truth,  so  far  as  his 
wealth  and  its  acquisition  is  concerned ;  but  that  he  was  born  and 
destined  to  bring  combination  out  of  competition  in  the  oil  indus- 
try, has  probably  never  entered  his  estimate,  and  that  wealth  was 
only  the  avalanche  which  the  process  brought  down  upon  him 
will  no  doubt  astonish  even  him. 

Give  Mr.  Harriman  the  means,  as  we  have  said  in  the  earlier 
chapter,  by  which  he,  and  we  with  him,  may  see  the  realization  of 
his  day  and  night  dreams,  of  a  perfect  system  of  transportation  in 
this  nation,  and  he  will  not  stop  to  discuss  the  price,  either  in  gold, 
or  in  any  form,  that  shall  be  the  meed  of  his  personal  service.  If 
the  reader  is  at  all  skeptical,  ask  Mr.  Harriman.  We  have  never 
seen  either  him  or  Mr.  Rockefeller. 

Human  achievement,  the  consummation  of  human  ambition,  is 


98  THE  NEW  COLUMBIA 

God's  own  reward  to  him  who  witnesses  its  consummation.  And 
purely  pecuniary  concomitants  are  its  merest  incidents. 

Few  indeed  are  the  men,  and  none  of  them  are  great,  or  ever 
could  be  great,  whose  ambition  is  wealth,  unmixed  and  unadulter- 
ated with  a  consuming  purpose  to  accomplish  some  great  result, 
and  these  few  never  have,  and  never  will  admit  that  the  end  of  man 
is  riches,  for  what  shall  it  profit  a  man  that  he  gain  the  world,  if, 
departing,  he  cannot  say,  I  have  finished  a  good  work. 

Excellence  in  all  departments  of  human  endeavor  always  did, 
and  always  will,  bring  to  its  possessor  all  the  real  pleasures  which 
is  in  the  store  of  nature ;  and  with  it  the  respect,  the  commenda- 
tion, yea,  the  laudation  of  his  fellows,  in  the  exact  ratio  and  pro- 
portion of  the  degree  of  his  excellence  as  compared  with  that  of  his 
fellows.  That  is  an  eternal,  unchangeable  law  of  human  nature 
and  cannot  be  eradicated,  for  "The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his 
meat." 

You  cannot  dim  the  luster,  or  destroy  the  popularity  of  him 
who  by  his  eloquence,  can  move  the  heart  to  pity,  and  the  eye  to 
tears,  or  him  whose  humor  can  stir  the  depths  of  mirth.  You  can- 
not separate  individual  man  from  the  just  enconium  that  comes  of 
noble  deeds  well  done ;  nor  can  you  dispel,  or  destroy,  the  public 
love  and  esteem  of  him  or  her  who  has  the  soul  and  gift  of  music, 
by  harp  or  voice,  to  soothe  the  souls  of  others;  or  the  stage  artist, 
who  delights  and  entertains  the  people  by  the  practice  and  mani- 
festation of  his  art. 

Precocity,  and  proficiency,  will  never  be  unheralded,  unhon- 
ored  or  unsung,  and  knowledge  is  power,  and  power  is  popularity, 
and  virtue  ever  was,  and  ever  will  be,  its  own  just  and  merited 
reward. 

Absolute  freedom  of  opportunity  to  develop  one's  tastes  and 
powers  in  whatever  direction  in  God's  Providence  they  tend  will 
bring  to  every  human  being  the  very  highest,  purest  and  holiest 
enjoyment  of  which  that  being  is  capable. 


THE  NEW  COLUMBIA  99 

"  Oh,  gentle  doctrine  of  Christ,  doctrine  of  love  and  of  peace, 
when  shall  all  mankind  know  thy  truth  and  the  world  smile  with 
a  new  happiness  under  thy  life  giving  reign!" 

"  Our  Father,  which  art  in  Heaven,  Hallowed  be  Thy  name. 
Thy  kingdom  come,  thy  will  be  done 
In  earth  as  it  is  in  Heaven." 


THE  END 


POST   STATEMENT 

WE  neglected  to  state  in  the  body  of  this  work  that  this 
New  Columbia  will  be  midwifed  by  a  nonpartisan 
political  party  known,  or  rather  unknown,   to  fame 
as  "The  American  Party." 

Just  as  soon  as  you  have  finished  reading  this  little  book,  we 
expect  you  to  become  an  "American"  (Indian).  We  expect  you 
to  dig  up  the  tomahawk  and  sound  the  tomtom,  and  get  the  tribe 
into  the  Wigwam,  and  have  a  Wigwam  in  every  corner  of  the  fence. 
All  you  need  do,  is  demand  a  National  Constitutional  Convention, 
and  then  we  Indians  can  help  Uncle  Sam  get  this  government 
away  from  the  politicians,  and  democratize,  civilize  and  christian- 
ize this  land,  and  make  it  fit  to  live  in,  and  until  we  do,  let  us  for- 
get that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  foreign  country. 

If  any  (yellow)  white  man,  says  "over-production"  in  your 
presence  or  hearing,  so  long  as  there  is  a  hungry  barefooted  child 
walking  the  frosty  pavements  of  the  cities  of  this  God-benighted 
land,  take  him  to  the  Wigwam,  scalp  him,  then  sharpen  his  toes, 
and  drive  him  right  down  into  Mother  Earth. 

The  Author  of  this  work  is  an  Indian,  who  was  brought  up  in  an 
Irish  family,  and  got  his  Christian  name  from  the  maternal  Irish 
grandfather,  and  he  will  appreciate  a  personal  letter  from  each 
reader,  after  having  read,  as  to  what  are  the  conditions  of  the  local 
Wigwam  and  the  number  of  the  braves. 

Address  care  New  Columbia  Publishing  Company, 

Findlay,  Ohio,  U.  S.  A. 
P.  Q.  T. 


To  Home  Seekers 


The 

Re-United  States  of  America 

If  the  people  of  America  do  their 
duty  and  we   believe   they   will. 

ON  AND  after  January  1,  1914,  all  lands  not 
actually  occupied  and  used  in  the  territory 
comprising  the  United  States  and  Canadian 
provinces  in  North  America  (not  reserved  for 
government  agricultural  and  industrial  school  and 
other  necessary  public  purposes)  will  be  open  for 
location  and  occupancy  by  actual  settlers, 
(citizens,  male  and  female,  and  aliens  declaring 
their  intention  to  become  citizens)  in  such  quan- 
tities as  they  may  desire  for  actual  occupancy  and 
use  but  not  for  rent  or  speculation. 

All  surplus  labor  will  be  employed  by  the 
government  in  internal  improvement,  and  paid  at 
the  uniform  rate  of  five  dollars  for  each  six-hour 
day's  service  in  government  certificates  of 
service  legal  tender  in  payment  of  all  debts,  and 
exchangeable  for  all  other  labor  products  at  their 
economic  value  as  fixed  by  the  government  depart- 
ment of  production  and  distribution  at  par 
and  without  profit. 

Come  and  establish  a  home  in  God's  land  of 
political  and  industrial  liberty  and  equality. 

The  American  Party 

Headquarters :     Room  9,  Olean  House,  Olean,  N.  Y.,  U.  S.  A. 
Hindquarters:    Cusac  Block,  Findlay,  O.,  U.  S.  A. 


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